Main Task Shoot Itinerary

Day: February 15th.

Location: Bathroom of a house.

Equipment: Artificial blood, cigarette, lighter, vodka bottle, camera, plastic distortion sheet, grey top, jeans,

incense stick (to create illusion of smoke). Other equipment includes dark eye make-up to make it look like she's been crying and a towel to clean up the mess! Tomorrow when Shaiane puts on her costume we will smear blood on her, this will mean it looks fresh ad therefore creates realism.

Objective: Our objective for tomorrow is to shoot the whole of our opening sequence. This is our basic plot: The woman will be cleaning blood from the bathroom, she will drink some vodka, throw up and then at the end she will smoke a cigarette. We haven't planned specific shots though and when shooting we will shoot the same actions but from different angles as well as shooting the bath and her cleaning the bath in many different ways. This will mean we have lots of footage to play around with during the editing process. We are dedicating the whole day to shoot this so it should be achievable.

Personell: Kate, Kona, Shaiane and Tayler.

Update

Because of the research we did into the suspense built in thrillers, we felt confident doing it ourselves and wanted some suspense in our opening. This is why we built on our initial idea of someone cleaning blood in a bathroom. The new plot is that someone knocks on the door and the character cleaning is scared; this would suggest to the audience that it's the police or someone bad at the door and therefore create tension. She opens the door at the climax of suspense and it's just a sales person. We did a quick draft, it's not the complete plot but here it is:  

We used hand held shots from behind and high angle shots to make the character look vulnerable. The close-up of her face lets the audience know she is scared, in turn making them scared. The shot of someone at the door is good because we can't see her full identity which builds suspense. At the end we had a little play around with the audio, character cleaning up seems to be in a dream like state; she does't know what's going on because of the severity of what she's done. We think we should and could do an opening with less of a plot than this and still get across the genre through music and lighting and angles. So we've concluded that we'll just have her cleaning up the bloody bathroom. This draft has allowed us to build on our skills meaning we'll have even more confidence during the process of our final opening scene.

Location of final opening scene

 

 
After realising the issues with our current idea we brainstormed new ideas and came up with the idea of someone cleaning up blood and mud in a bathroom which suggests they're covering their tracks after doing something bad e.g. murder which would be a convention of our chosen genre thriller. We visited the location today to see whether it'd be suitable and here are some pictures. As you can see it's quite plain and white, which is what we want; we want the blood and the character to be the centre of attention and the location doesn't have much relevance. We have all agreed that we feel confident in this idea and have decided to go ahead with it.

Doubts about our idea

After doing some more research into film openings we realised that our opening idea has too much of a plot. Film openings often establish one or two things; e.g. a character/s, setting, era, theme. For instance in the opening for This is England they just establish the time; by using news clips of 1980's events and a song from the time. The same clips help to let the audience know it's set in England. Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trR4hb9PGcY. 

Another opening which doesn't give too much of the plot away is Vertigo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qtDCZP4WrQ&feature=related. It establishes the theme with the use of haunting music and closeups of eyes with high key lighting. The red filter also helps to establish genre, horror, through the the colours association of blood. 

Storyboard

This will be the establishing shot, it shows the two characters in their location and what they're doing. We chose to have only the light on in the room they're in to create a sense of vulnerability; they look isolated and someone could easily be hiding in the shadows.

We will transfer from the establishing shot to this close-up of Shaiane's face using zoom. This creates tension and helps to establish her being the main character. It also introduces the idea of her interest in the attic. She looks upwards after her carer, Kona, asks her what's on her mind which makes it obvious that she really does have in interest in the attic.

The phone rings and Kona goes to answer it, leaving Shaiane on her own. We chose to show this from behind because the carer is not a very important character. It could also add to the sense of vulnerability and therefore tension.

We filmed to angles of her getting the phone. I think if we actually did it we should only have one because it's not that important in the plot.

The character Shaiane plays then goes to the cupboard and take out some pills, we'd show this through the reflection on the mirror on the cupboard. This confirms to the audience that she does have mental issues.

This birds eye view shows her flushing her pills down the toilet. Although it makes her look small and vulnerable i don't really like the shot; I think a point of view shot would look better. And we could perhaps have two shots of her doing this to make the action seem faster and more tense; as if she's going to get caught.

This is a classic thriller shot used in any films, here is a clip on youtube of a compilation of thrilling mirror scenes which has inspired us-  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_Off2PXy-M

We'll cut from her head starting to turn to a point of view shot of looking behind her and nothing being there. We chose POV shot so the audience can relate to her.

This is the shot we chose to show her looking at the attic, I think it's effective because she's small in comparison to her surroundings. But then it's a low shot which makes her look powerful so if we used this it wouldn't be so low.      

This is a shot from later in the plot when she climbs up to the attic. The birds eye view means she looks vulnerable.                                               

Opening sequence plan presentation

This is our presentation in which we explain our plans for our opening sequence.

9 screenshots of a film opening

This is a 9 grid analysis of the film Vertigo's opening titles. In parts the titles have been superimposed over the sequence which is what we want to do with our titles. Because we only have a maximum of two minutes for our opening we need all the time possible, not superimposing the titles will mean less time for the actual footage. This opening also relates to ours because it establishes the genre which is thriller. I have picked up from research into film openings, like this one, that the main title of the film comes at the beginning half of the sequence and the director at the end so that's where we'll put ours.