Problems With The Thriller

There was a delay in the the beginning of the filming of our thriller film, consequently we began to look for music on http://www.unsignedbandweb.com/ which let us download free, uncopyrighted music. We then found a song that we felt would add a lot more meaning to our piece. The music is fairly slow, played by acoustic guitar. Although we were pleased with this music, we were aware that we would have to think about our storyboard more in order to add more depth to it. This led to more problems as we had to think up new events for the opening of the film. Previously, we had decided to show clips of a girl panicking whilst running through fields, we would would later show clips of her, having been beaten up, tied up and left in a white room. This was supposed to be the girl's flashback. However, having found our music, we realised that the second section would not fit in so well.

What difficulties/ problems did we encounter?
Before we filmed our thriller opening, we looked on several websites to see what kind of music we wanted to use. After listening to several upbeat songs which would have fitted with a scene that included a high speed chase (the affect we thought we wanted), we then listened to a slow, calm piece of music written by Sylvan Young and played on acoustic guitar. We realised that this gave more depth to our opening as it represented how the character was not running away because she had done something wrong, but because she was scared and alone and knew she had to find a safe place. The music lets the audience relate to the character as they are able to get closer to her. Realising that we had found the right music for our thriller, we also understood that we would need to change the storyline slightly. This is because the previous storyline, including flashbacks and bright flashes of light, seemed trivial and we no longer wanted to display a simple message to the audience. Once realising al of this, we then had to change the storyline so that it would complement the music and continue to create mystery for the audience.
For our opening, we wanted specific weather conditions; these included heavy rain and a dark, cloudy sky. The first time we shot on location, the weather conditions were perfect for the scene but proved very difficult to work in. We had to hold an umbrella over the camera at all times to prevent it from getting damaged, the actress playing Grace had to run around in character wearing only the costume that she was given and she became cold and tired very quickly and the tripod slipped about on the muddy ground, making it hard to get a steady shot. After filming several shots, we had to give up and knew that we would have to continue filming on another date. This also proved difficult as the location of the film is in the countryside and we didn’t want to have to travel there to find that the weather conditions were not right. Finally, we found another day where the weather conditions were similar to that of the first day we had shot, and we continued to capture the rest of our thriller opening. The lighting was slightly different to that of the previous shots, but we successfully managed to make it look like the same brightness when editing with the film software afterwards.
Initially, we knew that we did not want to keep any diagetic sounds to our opening, to once again, add to the feeling of desolation and loneliness. After capturing all of our footage, and beginning to edit, we realised that without diagetic sound our thriller began to stray away from the thriller signifiers.