Time management

Organisation of Actors, locations and props

Our horror piece requires 3 actors; a mum, dad and girl. We have selected various friends and family members who we believe would best uphold these roles, their pictures are in our character profiles. Zac Levin will play the father, despite being 16, he looks much older because of his beard. Olivia Martin will play the motherly role as she comes across as very mature and also looks older than she is. My sister Lily Wiltshire will play the role of the young girl because featuring a younger girl would be more challenging and the concept of the film may scare them. We would require parental permission to feature anyone younger however we can make my sister look younger than she is. Her bedroom is laid out perfectly as one wall consists of a wide window which we will feature in our horror piece. Our other location is a park in Cranham as it is local for everyone involved, so it is easy to get to, but it also is often empty and so we can take advantage of this in order to have no distractions when filming. An isolated park proves to be the perfect location for a horror film as people are vulnerable when isolated. The park is also a place of joy and happiness which fits in with the horror genre as horror films tend to destroy concepts of childhood for example in the film Dead Silence the puppet is possessed and it kills an innocent wife. We have been influenced by this concept of possession by including it in our own horror piece as the doll possesses the girl who then has an out of body experience as she stares at her possessed self outside the window. The props we will require for our piece include a doll, a book and a torch. These are everyday household items which help to reveal the normality of the situation prior to the possession. The bedtime story will end in "and they lived happily ever after" this will help to foreshadow that they will not live happily ever after... We will also require make up in order to make the possessed girl look different, in order to do this we aim to make her look dirty with backcombed hair- much like the girl featured in the exorcist. We aim to also black out her eyes either via editing or the use of blacked out lenses which you can purchase from fancy dress stores.

Horror film Recces

This is one of the two locations for our horror film, Inside, for our main brief. Most of the filming will occur here in Alice's bedroom. First is a long shot of the bedroom,

Then we have an over the shoulder shot of what will be the mum reading her daughter a bedtime story...

 Thirdly we have a long shot of Alice looking out of her bedroom window, we are unsure at this point (as the audience) as to what she is looking at...

Then lastly we are presented with what she is looking at, and although it isnt in this shot, Alice's possessed self will be standing on the other side of the window looking back at her. We have yet to determine whether this will be a point of view shot of Alice looking at the reflection.  

Brainstorming for the main brief

My group for the main brief consists of Esme Roberts and myself. We previously worked together and felt that we could work harmoniously and produce a good quality piece of work by combining our skills and ideas. Here is our brainstormed initial ideas; we decided to come up with two in case one proved too difficult to film. Our favourite idea was with the doll and this is the one we plan to follow through with for our main brief.

Recce's to test potential shots in our location

Our initial location was in one of our houses where we would film in the kitchen, lounge and corridors. However this did not seem feesable given the time allocated to film in school hours and so we decided to film on the school site in the club house. This had all aspects of a house that we needed other than a sink and so we have cropped out the scene where she pours herself a glass of water. These are some of the shots we tested to see whether our location would work with the shots we initially planned, which it did! This is the over the shoulder shot where she locks the front door. 

This is our match on shot showing the start and end position of our camera from left to right. The girl will walk from the door to the sofa showing the continuity of her actions. 

These are our shot reverse shots, abiding by the 180degree rule as the girl is always on the right of the camera shot. 

Character profiles for my mini brief

Character profiles:

Isabelle Wiltshire

Teenage girl who has recently been throwing her life away partying and getting drunk to become popular to impress her new boyfriend. She used to be a straight A student however is now failing as she feels being dumb like her boyfriend is sexier than being a so called ‘nerd’. She has also been staying out each night, lying to her mum about her whereabouts however she has just been caught.

Esme Roberts (Isabelle’s Mother)

A mum who expects highly of her children, she doesn’t pressurise them too much; she just wants them to succeed and be the best they can be. After recently celebrating Isabelle’s GCSE results she has held back a little bit to let Isabelle celebrate herself. After briefly meeting Isabelle’s new boyfriend on results day (only to discover he didn’t pass any of his exams) she was cautious, as his first impressions have left an imprint on her that she can’t shake off. After recently worrying about Isabelle’s whereabouts one night she decided to track her daughters I phone - something she hasn’t had to do before however discovered her daughter was at a nightclub when she was meant to be working at the local Italian restaurant. Isabelle’s mother waited up for her daughter to have a few words…

^The above profiles describe the charcateristics and background of each character within the mini brief. I will play the role of the drunken girl whilst my other two group members will fulfill the roles of the disappointed mother and also the camera-man.

Mini brief

Today we were given our mini brief which is something we have to complete before we can complete our main brief which is to create an opening to a horror film. Our mini brief is to create a short film. We have decided to film a mum waiting up for her daughter to come home after a night out. We must include a match on shot, a shot-reverse-shot and also must show our understanding of the 180 degree rule. I will be posting my groups progress which will include a character analysis, a storyboard and also various location shots.