First Draft Of Our Film Opening

From watching our first draft of our opening film sequence we have found areas where we need to improve and change and also come up with new ideas to add to it. The first change that we need to make is we need to make the shot of the gate at the beginning still because we didn't put it on the tripod so the shot is really shaky. We also came up with the idea of Holly standing in the window when we have the close up of the window at the start. We then decided that we need more close ups in our film so we thought of having a close up of Holly's eyes as we put eye make up on her to make her look more tired so we think it would be more effective to show that she is obviously tired and the lack of sleep is taking its affect on her. We will have the shot of Holly's eyes before we see the shot of Holly on the bed looking through the photo album. 

We then thought of other close up ideas that we could include we came up with shots of a candle, pictures, dolls, books and jewellery. When Holly goes to check if her mum is unaware of what she is doing we will have a close up of the mirror her walking towards the room and then go back to a mid shot. We also then need to make the TV noise louder. After that we then came up with the idea of her being cautious that someone is watching her or she could be hearing 'voices' whilst she is leaving the house whilst walking across the garden this will leave the audience wondering is someone actually following her or is it all in her head.

The Changes That We Had To Make

Unfortunately, the girl who we had lined up to play Charlotte and the mother couldn't come on the day of filming, therefore with short notice we had to make several changes to our film.

Changes to the story line

As Daisy the little girl who was going to play the main character wasn't available when we were filming the main character was played by Holly. Holly is schizophrenic and believes her twin sister (who passed away when they were younger) is calling her, so she tries to find her, even though these are just auditory hallucinations.

Changes to the cast

The main character is now a teenager rather than a six year old, it meant we had to make a lot of changes to what we had planned to do but I think it worked out better than it would have done with a younger girl anyway. As having an older main character meant they could understand the concept of the film better and get more into character. It was also easier to give directions, if it was a younger child they might not of understood. The mother is also played by a different person but is of a similar same age of our original choice, so didn't really make much difference.

Changes to props
We were originally going to have the daughter carrying a doll out of the house, but as our new actress was 17 we changed the prop to a photograph which links in with the altered story line, as the photo is of the girl's twin sister.

Changes to costume
We decided to use more plain costume for the daughter as the film is set in the current day and therefor we wanted to show this with the clothing too. We still used the wellington boots to put questions in the audience's minds about where the girl is going and why she needs wellingtons.

Location

The location that we have chosen to film our opening sequence is at Myrtle Cottage in Clapton in Gordano. We will be filming at Laura's Nan's house. We chose this location because we thought it was the perfect scenery and works well for our opening sequence. Below are pictures that we have taken to show the location of where we will be filming the different scenes.

Planning

Target Audience

I have found that psychological thrillers usually have age ratings of 15. This is because they contain violence and psychological issues that may be disturbing to young people. However the target audience differs from the age limit as the target audience is the main ages of the market that the film aims to entertain. For our film we think it would be a good idea to target an audience of late teens to young adults. Approximately 16-25. By targeting teenagers this  means we will have a greater understanding of what this age group want in a film. Also because it will mean we can have a larger sample size for our primary audience research to make our findings more representative.

Custome Ideas

Costume Ideas

Daisy who plays Charlotte (Main character):
Scene 1- 10: Girly dress - no shoes
Scene 10- 17: Girly dress, coat and wellies
Daisy is the main character in our film, Daisy is a young girl, when we first began to think about what Daisy would be wearing we decided that Daisy would be an out going girl who is not stereotypical girl you would probably see in a thriller film. We decided to choose the mixture of clothes as it shows her actions are spontaneous and not planned and therefore has just picked up any clothes she could find. Also the use of the girly dress suggests the innocence of the girl which is contrapuntal.
Ideas:

Gemma (Mother):
Scene 7 & 9: Still in her work clothes- but more casual, hair down, slippers etc.
When deciding what the mother would be wearing we also looked into the characters characteristics. We have chosen to have the mother dressed in work clothes because the opening sequence is set in the evening/night, so when the little girl is sneaking out of the house it shows that the mother is not aware of what she is doing and is more interested in relaxing and watching television after a long day at work.                 

Props and Make-up

In class as part of our prop and make up research we looked into what make up we would  consider using in our film . We learnt and practised making fake blood to create wounds with. We made the blood by mixing Golden Syrup, Nesquick and Red food colouring.

Below is an image to show the fake wound we made:










After we then decided that we are going to use the fake blood at the end of the opening but not a scar. We will just add a small amount on the child's hand whilst she is scraping her hand against the wall to give the piece a darker twist to it. We also then decided that the girl should carry an old doll around with her, this will add to the eeriness of the piece as it is contrapuntal as the young girl is carrying around a doll which is associated with young children and innocence.

Storyboard

Storyboard

The story is about a child who has schizophrenia, her parents aren't aware of this as she has only recently started to experience the symptoms. In the opening sequence of the film, the girl has an auditory hallucination where she stops what she is doing to try and find 'the person' she thinks is talking to her and telling her to run away to come find them. She walks out of her house and down the country lane, which is when the opening ends and the title appears.The audience should not know the child has schizophrenia from the film opening as it should only be revealed towards the end of the film to build up suspense and mystery. After the titles finish  the film would start with her parents realising  their daughter had gone and then trying to find her. Throughout the film there would be more strange occurrences while the family try to work out what is wrong with their child.