CONSTRUCTION: MIRROR SCENE

Today I filmed the scene of the mirror.  I began by simply zooming into the mirror as the Susan March character played and plaited the dolls hair. We then thought that it would be a better idea to pan up so we end up looking into the mirror with the protagonist. The scene is cynical as she looks into the mirror whilst playing with the dolls hair.

When I edited this clip I added an effect named Vignette. This made the colour darker which yet again adds to the thriller codes and adds to the atmosphere. 

CONSTRUCTION: DOLL SCENES

In the lesson I filmed the doll scenes. One scene where she is stroking the dolls head, one where she is rocking her and finally another scene where she is stroking her. These are all to show her love and affection for this doll and demonstrate how she is treating it as if it is a real child. 

The fact that she is treating the doll with this love and affection shows that her mental state is not stable as this is an extremely uncommon thing for a middle aged woman to be doing. 

RESEARCH: SOCIAL GROUPS

We researched what social groups are in our opening sequence. There are 5 social groups: mothers who want children but can't have them, mothers who do have children, doctors, war photographers and children.

The mother of who doesn't have children is the main character. In our society we are surrounded by people with children and there is a very small percentage of people of don't have children therefore it is obvious that when you cannot have children it is a difficulty. This woman is of an age of 35-40 as she has missed out on the opportunity to have children although this is why she cannot have a them. The would-be mother is driven to insanity as she is surrounded by pregnant women, children and being a woman missing out on this is a big thing. Most women would always want the chance to have children. The would-be mother is a middle class woman who lives a normal life however this news drives her insane and it is clear this is not the first time she has had a mental breakdown like this.

Another social group is people with mental illnesses. Although we only see the would-be mother has a mental illness there are many other people out there who could have them too. They can be of any age and any social class and the fact that we cannot see their mental illness causes difficulty for them to cope. 

The second group is mothers with children who the would-be mother envies. In our opening the would-be mother looks at them with jealousy as she wishes she could what they have. They are young women who still are able to have more children which she is also angry about. These women are in the park scene as the would-be mother watches in envy as they nurture their children and families whereas she has nothing.

Another main social group is children which is represented by the doll. The woman craves to have a child of her own therefore the doll is her substitute child as she cannot have her own.

Another social group in our film is war photographers. They are people who have seen lots of trauma in their lives as they have witnessed war, conflict and death. They must be people who try and be strong as they see all this trauma. Although they can be strong in their profession, after witnessing all the things they do it can lead to serious consequences. Most war photographers lead to being alcoholics, being depressed and have PTSD.  

The final group is doctors which is only in it with his voice however his part is important as he is the one that delivers the news to her which is what drives her to become to psychotic.

RESEARCH: CHOOSING A DISTRIBUTOR

We have selected Metrodome to be our distributor. It is a well known, London, independent distributor known for their creative releases and for challenging critics. 

Metrodome says “from box office hits to cults, animation and arts releases, we’ll always deliver an unforgettable experience.” Some recent releases consist of: The Nun (Nicloux, 2013), A Royal Affair(Arcel, 2012), Summer in February, (Menaul, 2013), In Darkness, (Holland, 2011) and Before The Fall,(Gansel, 2004). 

We feel that our film fits with this as it contains serious matters, kidnapping and is a tense thriller following the mind of a war photographer. 

RESEARCH: DISTRUBUTION

I made a Prezi exploring different distributors and case studies of successful film distributions.

PLANNING: CALL SHEETS

We made our call sheets today to organise when and where we are going to do filming. However I decided to put all these together on a presentational tool called Padlet . This means that I can see all the call sheets on my 'pin board' type document. This means I can see all the call sheets at once rather than scrolling through each one.

Created with Padlet

RESEARCH: CHOOSING A NAME

After I had made a Scoop It which had loads of different information on it which was giving us inspiration for a name, I decided to make a New Hive explaining how we came to our decision of our film being called Hush Little Baby. 


CLICK HERE TO SEE MY NEW HIVE

RESEARCH: DECIDING ON A NAME

I researched on the internet and iMDB for different names that our thriller could be called. I then collated this information into a Scoop It to help us think of an idea for a name.

CONSTRUCTION: PRACTICE FILMING

We decided we would try and find a successful location to film for the first scene where the woman is in the waiting room. We thought that one of the rooms at school would be successful as they have posters around about different health issues which creates a believable mise-en-scene.

We then set up the chairs we thought they would be like in a doctors waiting room and we got our friends to do typical nervous movements. For example people were hitting their pen and tapping their feet. This shows that these people are all nervous as they are all waiting for results. We did a pan across these girls from right to left to focus on each ones certain actions. This experiment went successfully however we had difficulties making the noises loud enough.

CONSTRUCTION: PRACTICE CAMERA MOVEMENTS

Today in our lesson we went out to do some planning shots to decide what sort of camera movements and shot types we would use in our opening sequence. We decided to film the doll mostly as she is the main prop in our opening sequence. The first difficulty we came across was the location we would film in. After thinking about filming in a park we then decided that we would film in a tree house. We tried a variety of different camera movement such as panning from right to left where we see the doll sitting in the tree house. We then zoomed in through the window of the house onto the doll. This camera movement was effective. After we did a tracking shot of the woman as she walks in and strokes the dolls face. Finally we did a point of view camera shot where she looks through the fence to make sure that no one is watching her.

After carrying out this experiment we have decided that we must use a dolly when filming tracking shots as the outcome of our experiment as shown us that without the camera can be very shaky.

Here is one clip of the filming that we did.