Filming and Preparation.

Our Storyboard....OBSESSION

Above is our simplified storyboard, we are aware that not all aspects of the film will be exactly like what we anticipate, but this is a vague idea of 'Obsession'.

Before we film, we had to prepare our props, actors, clothing options for actors and timing. We had to make sure that the props looked realistic, the theme of stalking and obsession was followed through-to do this we created a shrine with the photographs we produced and missing posters.

Me and Darcy producing the shrine in lesson.

This is the shrine. The black and white photo's act as a background, while the coloured photographs  are the significant latest victims to the plot. this was purposely done to add subtle importance to the film.

The two of us setting up the surroundings and placement of the shrine. We thought that the desk would be perfect as the light highlights the photos and will look great on film.

The desk, we have added a pic-axe type tool, which can also symbolise a upside down cross to connote  evil and the evil inside the murderers head.

As you can hopefully see the difference in this developed photo, we cleared the  bench  press and replaced white cloth to lay the victim on. This is to see the contrast between a morbid subject (the dead girl) and the innocence and purity of the white.

Darcy beautifully demonstrating the scene.....

SCRIPT

This is the only dialog in our film, it is a small piece that will be heard in the background of the opening credits.

"...Thank you John. I'm standing outside Edmonton County School where nineteen year old Isabelle Bascombe was last seen at about 3pm on Tuesday afternoon. Police are concerned of her whereabouts as it may be linked with previous kidnappings around the local area. Their main suspect is a middle aged mental asylum escapee, Lee Street. If anyone knows any information as to whereIsabelle Bascombe may be, pleasecontact us via the details at the bottom of the sceen. Im Grace Cush, back to the studio." 

Tuesday 20th March, the beginning of our filming.

Today we planned to film the news report, the script already previously wrote and to film the body of the story. As the latest victim 'Isabelle Bascombe' was last seen leaving Edmonton County school, we chose the outside building to be the area to film the report to add continuity. We filmed around 4.00pm after the building was empty. It took us at least half an hour to film a minute clip as we had to stop and start considering the traffic noise down the a10 and laughter of actors.

Another prop involved is a microphone for the news report. We borrowed a mic from a local DJ/Friend and I cut red cardboard out, made a rectangular like box and printed out the BBC news logo to add realism to the report. 

Make up is important to this thriller as the girls involved need to look as if they've been dead for  a period of time. To do this I used a white powder as the base of their face, black/brown eye shadow around their eye sockets and black eye liner to emphasise the depth of the socket and purple lipstick to look as though they have lost all circulation.

 

The final product. With the make up looking morbid, we then asked the girls to pain their nails  red as this colour connotes and is familiarised with love (obsession) and danger.  We have also continued the contrast of death and purity by clothing the girls in white dresses.


Filming continued...
At around 7.00pm we decided to film the body of the film on the 20th of March as the lightening was dim (dark enough to add the typical mood lightening), the weather on this day was fine, all the actors could make it and Darcy's house and Mum's car was available. It took an hour to film the necessary different shots to create the plot of the film. We considered extra lightening to highlight certain things (shoes) and any unnecessary shadows. I believe that it was successful and I am hoping the final product after editing will bring it all together.

Planning Our Thriller.

OBSESSION.... is the name of our thriller. It's the typical one  word movie like 'Taken' and 'Psycho'. Our film contains a mixture of original theory's of Propp and Barthes. The idea of clearly recognising the characters roles and the use of symbols and connotation. Our film will contain a Mental asylum escapee (played by Lee Street) who has an obsession with kidnapping girls in mysterious ways and killing them.  The film will contain previous victims (Amy Dunlea and Sophie England) and the latest (Isabelle Bascombe), themes of obsession, love and confusion will be displayed throughout.

Actors...

Lee Street




Isabelle Bascombe



Sophie England And Amy Dunlea

Locations...

This is the car that we are planning to use as the carrier of the dead/missing girls, we chose this car as it is spacious enough for the girls to laydown comfortably.





The seat have been taken out and pushed back in order to create more room.

 

This is the side entrance to the alley inwhich the murderer will carry the girl into the garden from the boot. The bins will be removed in order to create room and avoid any harm to the actors.



The alley heading into the garden. We will consider the positioning of the murderer holding the victim as there is quite a walk from the car to the garage.

This is the path that leads into the garage. This is where the murderer will walk down, still with the victim in his arm. There will be a number of different POV shots to establish a journey.

The door of the garage. It looks worn down and abandoned, therefore shall be perfect for the creepy appearence and happenings of our film.





The view of the entrance to the garage, as you can see it needs to be cleared out before filming in order to allow room.



This is the murderes desk, again this will be cleared and we will set up a number of items and pictures to set the 'obsessed' themed look.



As our film involves a dissapearence of three girls, to add to the affect we have produced missing posters. We researched appearences of them in order to create realism.

This is our cleared out version of the gargage, the bench press will be moved once filming begins.



Again we have cleared the entrance and the desk, now we can start placing items and shrines on to surrounding area of the desk.



Before we could make the shrine, myself and Darcy produced a number of 'stalker' themed photographs. This is because it will add to the effect that they have been watched before their kiddnapping and murder. We planned to take these photos down my road......

Outside my house.....

The involvment of the friendship group as the murders will be linked......

Jubilee Park, it was convenient and near.

One of the 'stalker' like photos, the girls are unaware of the photos being taken.



The friendship group (the main targets).



Another Example of stalking photography.

Audience Theory.

The mass market - collectively considered audiences, this includes; GENDER (Male+Female), AGE (Children, Tweens, teens Young adults, Older adults, Pensioners)  LOCATION (USA, UK, Europe, London, South East) and CLASS.

Income Bracket/Status

A   Top Middle Class

Top management, bankers, lawyers, doctors and other professionals

B   Middle Class

Middle management, teachers, many 'creatives' e.g graphic designers etc  

C1 Lower Middle Class

Office supervisors, junior managers, nurses, specialist clerical staff etc

C2 Skilled Working Class

Skilled workers, tradespersons (white collar)

D   Working Class

Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers (blue collar)

E   People at lowest level of income

Unemployed, students, pensioners, casual workers

Young and Rubicam's Four Consumers

Mainstreamers Make up 40% of the population. they like security, and belonging to a group.

Aspirers Want status and the esteem of others. Like status symbols, designer labels etc. Live off credit and cash

Succeeders People who have already got status and cash

Reformers Define themselves by their self-esteem and self-fulfillment

In class we watched a couple of trailers as a task to identify the consumers/audience of the genre. we took into consideration the film classifications, the music, themes and genre to guess the audience of the film.

The trailers.

Pirates of the Caribbean.

Gender- Appeals to both due to the genre and main actors.

Age-PG/12 (Tweens-Young adults)

Location-Global

Class- C1-E

The Exorcist. 

Gender- Aimed at males.

Age- 18 (Young adults)

Location- USA, UK

Class- B-E

Saw.

Gender- Mainly male.

Age- 18 (Young adults)

Location- GLobal

Class- C1-E

Preliminary Task

Preliminary Exercise.

Continuity exercise involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing the room and sitting down on a chair opposite another character, both exchanges lines of dialogue. It should include Match on Action (filmed twice but shows continuity, once edited the sequence becomes fluent), 180 Degree Rule (shooting from the same side) and Shot-Reverse Shot (when characters are involved in a dialogue, flilmed with close ups of one person, then cut to a close up of the other).

  The Storyboard of the preliminary task.

The task.

Here is the preliminary task which I filmed whilst my group partner Darcy and friend Tobi 'starred' in. We took into consideration the shots needed to be involved and a decent location to film in which was suitable and that had a door to walk through and a sitting area to continue doing the shot-reverse shots. so we choose the school common room. It had its disadvantages like the lack of silence so we couldn't hear the dialogue during the filming. I believe we have used the appropriate shots correctly and it has fluently been filmed. The bad point in this video are that as we were friends, the acting and dialogue wasn't taken too seriously so this needs to be thought through in our main task. This clip also needs to be edited so that some clips will be taken out for it to run more smoothly.

Here is the edited version of the Preliminary task, we imported the original task onto iMovie, from there we dragged the clips into place, we cut some clips to delete any unnecessary noise/laughter from me or the 'actors', this made the clip run fluently.

Still frames of the Preliminary Task.

Darcy opens the door.

Darcy walks through the door, shot of match on action begins in this frame.

Match in action continues as the sequence becomes on smooth frame.

Darcy crosses the room.

Darcy sits down opposite another character, Tobi. This  demonstrates the 180 degree rule.

Shot-Reverse Shot begins here.

Shot-Reverse Shot continues with other character.

Shot-Reverse Shot.

Shot-Reverse Shot ends.

Coursework Groups.

I have decided to work in a two person group with Darcy Sullivan (http://darcythrillercoursework.blogspot.co.uk/)as we are good friends and own the same characteristics to perform well during this task. We have had initial ideas about the content of our thiller movie clip, for example- a kidnapp/psychological type, rather than the typical murder storyline.
   We have taken into consideration the audience (rated 15); this allows minimal violence, minimal nudity and rare use of bad language to be used in our film. The themes within a thriller itself contain frightful, distressing scenes, the use of tensions and anticipation to heighten the arousal of the audience is heavily used in this type of genre; therefore we will have to also take this into consideration when planning our final idea.

Thriller Films.

Panic Room - We watched a three minute clip in lesson of 'Panic Room' to give us a rough idea of the codes and conventions of a typical thriller. it was a continuous shot with no edits which was purposely done to heighten the anticipation of the audience. Zooming was effectively used to create a good sense of POV. The typical blurry 'villain' was outside the house was another convention of a thriller. We shall consider using a variety of continuos shots or the use of zooming to highlight importance or to create frightful arousal.

Taken - This thriller owns the same narrative theory of Vladimir Propp, the idea of the hero (the father), the victim/damsel in distress (the daughter) and the villains. The defined roles in this film has produced a dramatic action thriller full of tension and suspense. This idea of defining key roles will help build understanding for the audience, in order to produce a successful thriller we will dedicate key roles in our films so that the storyline seems less complexed.

Shutter Island - This is a more psychological themed thriller containing confusing, distressing, anticipating scenes with clever techniques of plots and twists, some narrative retardation/complexed characters and the heavily use of mis direction. The element of mystery and twists will be heavily considered in our planning of our film as this highlights the key areas of a successful thriller and engages the audience.