Shot List

I find shot lists useful because unlike storyboards, I am able to rewrite them and cross out the shots as I film them. This makes it clear to me what I have done and what I need to do. Although I adapted some shots and shot extra material when filming that made it into my final film, the original shot list that I stuck to was this:

• Handheld mid shot tracks around the room to show the music box, child’s drawings and teddy bears on the bed.
• Mid shot of young girl playing with toys in her room.
• Close up of gate door banging in the wind.
• Long shot of the open bedroom window with lights on.
• Handheld close up tracking shot of young girl pouring tea.
• (Hidden cut) handheld close up tracking shot of mother preparing dinner.
• Close up of radio as announcement is heard.
• Long shot of mother as camera tracks up and through the ceiling.
• (Hidden cut) Close up of young girl playing tea parties when an adult male’s hand enters and picks up a teacup.
• Mid over the shoulder shot from behind the male shows the girl playing as camera moves down through the floorboards.
• (Hidden cut) Handheld long shot tracks down into the kitchen to show mother.
• Handheld mid shot tracks the mother as she walks out of the room.
• Mid shot shows mother walking up the stairs.
• Low angle shot of the mother’s feet on stairs.
• Over the shoulder shot from behind the young girl as she moves away to reveal the male figure.
• Over the shoulder shot from behind the mother as she approaches the door.
• Long shot of young girl as she replies to her mother, showing the empty room around her.
• Close up of door handle closing as the mother exits the room.
• Close up of male figure hidden behind the door as he takes a step forward.

 

Storyboards

Props And Things To Remember

Although everything I need should be in my house when it comes to film, it will most likely take a while to gather everything and sort through the props, so I will need to do this before it comes to film. This should be a much easier job than it was for my AS project, as I had to haul all of the props and filming equipment and walk to the other side of town. I will need to arrange a few of my props and position them in my sister’s room so that I can move around with the Steadicam. These are the props that I will need when I film:

• Music box
• Tea party set
• Toys
• Child’s drawings for the wall
• Radio

 

I will also need to have all the equipment to film my short film, I will need to borrow some of this from school, but other things such as the camera and SD card I will use my own. Other pieces of equipment I will need to remember include:

• Camera
• Sound recording equipment
• SD card
• Tripod
• Mini dolly
• Steadicam

Voice123 Radio Announcement

Following the success of our voice over last year, I decided that I might as well use the same website to contact another person that might want to help with my radio announcement. Last year we contacted about 3-4 people because we thought that we wouldn’t get many responses, to our surprise all of them agreed, so this year I only emailed one person to start with who had experience on the radio and asked if he would be willing to send over a voice recording.

I was thrilled with the response that I got, it’s incredible how many people are willing to help out. The audio file was recorded and sent over in only a few days and it sounds great!

Here is the unedited mp3 file that was sent to me:

Staying Organised

Throughout the A level year, I’ve found it easy to make lists so that I can stay organised. I like being able to write everything down and cross things off as they are done, which gives me a good idea of what I need to do. I was worried about the continuity of my film because I am likely to need to film on various days, therefore I wrote down each and every shot that I needed to film onto a list which greatly helped when it came to filming, because I knew I had everything filmed, I was able to shoot extra shots.

It wasn’t strictly a shot list or shooting script like the one I used at AS because I didn’t find them to be too helpful because I know how to frame my shots by using the storyboards and it won’t necessarily matter what order I  shoot in as long as it’s convenient because all of the locations are in my own house. They were a load of scribbles and confusing codes but they were there for me to understand and they helped me greatly!

Sound Design

There will be a fair few aspects to the sound design in my short film, more than I had last year. I know that this may start to get a little confusing because even with less sound effects at AS level, I still had between 2 and 5 layers of sound at any one time. It will help to organise when I will need everything and at what point in my film. I will also need to find or record any pieces of music, sound or dialogue in advance before it comes to editing.

Diegetic Sounds:

• Music box – This will play right through my film from the first shot, however it will become almost silent as the camera moves into the kitchen.
• Radio music – This will be fade in as the camera moves through into the kitchen and will be interrupted by the radio announcement before the mother changes channel back to more music.
• Radio announcement -This will be heard during the shot of the radio before we see the mother enter the shot and change channel.
• Gate door banging – We will hear this at the beginning of the scene before the shot cuts to the gate door where the banging will become louder, this will eventually fade out.
• Dialogue – There is very little dialogue, however I will need to record this with the microphone.

Non-diegetic Sounds:

• Sound effects – There will be a number of drones and horror sound effects, particularly towards the end and when the adult male is shown in shot.
• Background drone – For my AS project, I put in a wind/drone sound that ran all the way through my film but it was fairly quiet and I found that this worked really well for the atmosphere so I will need to find this sound and run it through my entire scene.

Although I already have an old mobile attachment that plays music box music that I am able to record, I do feel that the music that it plays is a little generic and is one that is heard in pretty much every baby toy I used to own. Therefore I want to try and find something else that I could use, possibly something a little slower to add to the atmosphere and slow down the overall pace of the film. One piece of music that I really like is from the film ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, unfortunately I obviously can’t use this because it’s copyrighted, however this is the kind of thing I will be looking for:

Short Film Research: Bombay Sapphire

 

Bombay Sapphire has a YouTube channel that has a number of short films, one of which I wrote about in an earlier blog post, the BAFTA award winning ‘Room 8’. I’ve been watching the rest of their videos recently and I’ve noticed something that can be seen in almost all of the films which really makes them have an impact on the viewer. Nearly all of them follow a similar structure because they have made a ‘one script, five films’ imagination series. Most of the short films feature two characters either getting into a problematic situation or discovering something and taking advantages of it’s apparent benefits. The scenes are usually fairly confusing as they focus on something that is supernatural or beyond our technological knowledge. But it is the final shot or image that makes a massive impact on me as a viewer, they are both visually impressive and also tie together the whole story in a brilliant way.

The one that I liked in particular was ‘Exit Log’, which shows two women on a spacecraft. The film is set in a time when time travel exists, and the technology is in place for astronauts in case of emergency. The time travel is limited to 3 minutes and characters are able to send a message to their previous self before resetting time. When the ship begins to break down one of the girls sends them back in time with the message “don’t let her reset the time drive, she will attack you”. Following the message the protagonist is unable to stop her friend, who, as is mentioned in the message, attacks her and resets the time drive. Finally, she throws the key out of a chute into space so that nothing can be done.

It becomes very unclear to the viewer why this has all happened or what the consequences are until the final shot. This shot shows thousands of keys floating in space outside of their ship, implying that they have got themselves stuck in a time loop. This is the moment that it dawns on the two characters what will happen as well as the audience, which is why the single shot is so powerful. Not only does the audience realise what has been going on during the rest of the film but it allows them to guess what this will then lead to, which of course is the characters being stuck in the loop until their eventual death. I think this is why these shots are so powerful in each film in the series. I want to try and create a similar effect in my film with the last shot, I want it to be something that has an impact on my audience and tells them an entire story. This will take a lot of work in terms of planning, framing the shot and positioning and timing when it comes to editing, but hopefully it will make my finished film more of an impact.

Mise-en-scène

One of the things I love about horror is when something creepy is contrasted with fairy tales or something happy and innocent associated with childhood. I think the first piece of media within the horror genre that I fell in love with was American McGee’s Alice in Wonderland PC game, which I used to play with my dad when I was only about 6 or 7 (I’m amazed I wasn’t scared by the content at that age). The game is a really dark adaptation of the story in which Alice’s parents die in a fire, she begins to hallucinate during her stay at a metal asylum and dreams up the twisted version of wonderland which she must rescue. I had high expectations for Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland as I heard on the radio that it would be a little dark, however I was a little let down because I wanted it to live up to the style and standard that this game presented. I still have a great sense of nostalgia towards the video game and I want to incorporate some aspects of the design into my film.

I wanted my shots to be full of colour and toys, with the sound of the music box playing in the background, but at no point do I want the scene to be happy. I’m hoping that there will be a sense of darkness throughout even without the use of a threatening drone or before I have shown the antagonist. From the first shot, I want my audience to feel a little uneasy despite the fact that the shot is filled with toys and drawings and things that should be very happy and innocent. I will need to fill the shelf in my sisters room with toys, dolls and teddies and ensure that the whole shot is filled with colour, it helps that the walls of the room are painted yellow, which connotes happiness again contrasting with my storyline. The kitchen also displays the some of the same features on camera because of the tiles, fruit and coloured mugs on the worktops. I will have my young girl dressed in white and the entire scene will be lit quite brightly which is the opposite of the stereotypical dark lighting in scary films.

I will further create this effect by moving the camera round the room very slowly, cutting between shots as little as possible and adding in sound that will add to the tone of the film. I really look forward to filming and editing my short film together!

 

Risk Assessment

Last year, I didn’t do any sort of risk assessment before filming, although I didn’t see much that could cause problems in either storylines for AS or A2, I decided to check a risk assessment chart before production started.

The only two risks I could think of straight away for my production of ‘Familiar’, would be when the mother is preparing dinner there would be a knife involved and shooting scenes on the stairs. However, when I put these into the matrix the risk assessment of these two events happening would be low and the effects would be minor. Therefore I don’t think I need to worry too much about this but I will need to be cautious.

The consequences if the identified risks were to happen would range from a small bump to possibly missing fingers (although this is unlikely!) The steps I will take to avoid these will be general caution and ensuring that my tripod is secure and safe if it were to be placed on the stairs themselves.

Film Title

It has taken me quite a while to gather ideas for the title of my film because I didn’t want to give any of my story line away especially as I will be showing the title much earlier on in the scene as opposed to being able to show it at the end of the two minutes as I did for my film opening at AS. I didn’t want my title to sound sinister because the first minute or so of my film should appear to be quite innocent, therefore I had many ideas of my own and  ideas given to me along the lines of ‘Tea Party’ or ‘Tea Time’, however none of these really stood out to me and I didn’t feel that they suited my film too well when I thought of them.

I thought that the title would come to me after I’d made the film and the tone was established through editing, so I waited a little while. Then, with my dad’s help, I thought of a title that I felt would suit my film well. This title was ‘Familiar’, because at first people would think of the adjective definition and also associate it with words such as family. However there is also another definition of the word which relates to a supernatural demonic being that has assumed the form of an animal, I felt that  this could work really well for my story line especially as it is never explained why the male figure is in the room. It also relies on people knowing the second meaning of the word which I quite like because it will mean that some will interpret the film differently to others.

 

Although I now have a title that I am fairly keen on, I will continue to increase my options until it comes to having to put the title into my finished scene.