Special Effects and Make-up Research

Last year me and my group didn't try this out but this year we decided to try it out and see if we can get anything from it. I think that it will go well and will hopefully make our film seem more realistic.

Alice's make-up

Like I said in the costume post Alice is a very natural and innocent girl so red and blacks are out of the question. so instead we are going use warmer colours like pinks and light blues.

rough idea as to how Alice's eyes would look

The soft pinks and warm natural colours will make her seem more innocent. The natural feel will help give off the effect that she is a Christian and natural.

a gentle shade of pink maybe

A nice soft pink is the perfect colour for our natural Christian character. It emphasises on the fact that maybe Alice is a quiet girl who doesn't like to stand out.

This soft pink eye shadow will add to the innocent and girl'y look and also will make her seem more natural.

Stacey's make-up

Here is what we would do to Stacey to make her seem more of the promiscuous office lady.

Deep red lips and nails

The deep red nails may suggest that she likes to stand out and maybe get all of the attention from males..... possibly.

Scars

So for the wounds I thought what would be best would be to use some scar wax and realistic fake blood which you can get from more face-painting or special effects shop. We thought this would make Alice's death look more realistic and any cuts and wounds on Richard's hand would just give our film that extra authenticity. Also, using the scar make-up and fake blood would look much better than buying a wound already made and sticking it on - sometimes they can be a real pain.One drawback with this is that we would  have to make sure the wounds are done in the same place and the same way each time - however we are aiming to get all of these shots done first as to not have to worry about that later.

The video above simply just goes through how we would use the wax and fake blood to make the wounds that we want to achieve.

Here is an image of a bottle of flake blood

Here is a tub of wax that we would use

For Richard's knuckles, if we don't do the cuts on the back of his hands, I was thinking about simply using a type of blusher to make them look rather red and sore looking. This would stop the hassle of recreating his cuts to look old when it comes to the end of the film when he is waiting for the funeral, because red marks fade over time.

Prop Research

By Cameron Hargreaves:

Necklace

The style of necklace we'll need

 We want to give Alice a silver cross necklace. The picture above is a good example of what we're looking for; a cross, not a crucifix. It has to be silver, as gold in the eyes of Christians may represent greed. Alice is Christian, so she always wears this necklace. We want to have shot of the necklace around Alice's neck when she's lying at the bottom of the stairs, and another when Richard drops it on the floor on his way to leave for the funeral. On this shot, which will probably be the last shot, we want to use a focus pull to move the depth of field from the background to the foreground to show the necklace as the last object in the film.

Engagement Ring

Our chosen style of ring

       The engagement ring we chose will look something like the one above. It is silver primarily to symbolise her religion of Christianity. Gold is often linked to Greed and the Devil, when silver is pure and good. The ring will have some kind of gem on it because it is an engagement ring and not a wedding ring. We are looking to spend no more than £10.00 on one, so it will have to be a realistic but fake 'replica' ring.

Keys

Example of keys.        The keys are going to be used in two shots of our film in two different scenes. The use of the keys in the first scene will be to signify that Richard has just come back from work and it just gives it a casual look. In the second scene the use of the keys is signifying the fact that Alice is leaving Richard and giving him back the keys as if to say this is actually final.

Book

The book we want to use: 'The Girl in the Face of the Clock'.

        We want to use a book as a prop in the story. When the female, Alice, is at home waiting for Richard to return, she sits at the table (which is laid) and has a book with her. This is that book. We chose this particular book because it foreshadows what's going to happen to Alice later in the film. When the argument goes upstairs, she takes the book with her. Richard follows her up the stairs, and Alice throws the book towards him. Richard ducks, and the book goes down the stairs. When Alice falls, the book is face-up lying beside her, and the camera focuses on this. We could have the camera look at the book, then pan over to show her lying on the floor at the bottom of the stairs with Richard standing at the top, just like the book's cover portrays. 

Newspaper

Example of a newspaper.

         The newspaper will be used in the first scene, where (this was a new idea we came up with) a newspaper boy will bring the paper early in the morning and post it through the letter box - which really links to our films title and meaning which is that he, the same as the two girls, doesn't know what is going on behind that door, he's just got a job to do. It really shows how we have no idea what could be happening in somebody's house at any time.

         Another idea was that we could do another foreshadow of Alice's death within the paper itself, somehow. Whether we mange this is yet to be seen but it is an idea. 

Football

Football like the one we'll be using.

        The football will be used in the very first shot of the first scene within the establishing shot of the house. It will be kicked around by two young girls as they walk past the house laughing - this is meant to demonstrate the idea that they don't have any clue of what is going on behind the door of the house we are filming in - they think everything if fine when really, in our film, it turns out it really isn't fine. The football adds to this carefree look on life that children have, because they are simply having fun.

Formal Prop Plot

Costume Research

This is a costume post about what costumes our actors will be wearing.

There are 3 characters in our film: Richard, Alice and Stacey but Stacey is only present in the last few minutes of the short, she is there to walk Richard to the funeral car.

Richard
He's the antagonist in our film short and he wears typical office cloths like a suit and tie. Also having the posh suit and tie will suggest that he may have a well paid and maybe important job. The character will be of around the age of 20, he will wear black trousers, white shirt and a red tie. We decided against a blazer to give him more of a relaxed style to the way he works and maybe suggesting that he has worked there long enough now for his boss not to care too much about him not dressing in completely formal cloths.The antagonist however will wear a black blazer later on to make it more formal, after all it is a funeral.

Alice

The protagonist out of the three characters is Alice. We have dressed her in soft bright colour to suggest her innocence because she is a religious woman also she is 20. She will wear a pastel pink top and blue trousers.

Our Actress who we are referencing here would be Zoey Deschanel, for her big eyed innocent look and natural beauty.

Stacey

Stacey is our second antagonist, she is Richards work colleague and they have had an affair before. This then gave us the idea of a very promiscuous female character as our second antagonist and she is the kind of character that has slept with everyone in the office. She will have blonde hair, black dress (this is normal for funeral wear but it is also very short which also suggests very promiscuous things. We have gone with these things because they are the stereotypes for a very promiscuous office woman.

Here's is a second idea that we had for Stacey because the little dress will be uncomfortable to wear but we still wanted to stay with the very revealing idea so we also came up with a white shirt, black skirt and a black blazer.

Costume Research Table

Filming on location risk assessment

Here is my groups location risk assessment for when we begin filming.

A2 Media Risk Assessment

Location Research

In this post I will be describing the locations that we are going to be filming at for our five minute film.

Interior

We decided to have a house setting, we were going to use the stairs, the main room and the kitchen. We chose these rooms because these are generally the main rooms of a house and the best rooms to stage an argument in. Also these rooms contain a lot of things like cups, plates, lamps and all of theses things could be broken to make the argument more realistic and dramatic. Although the stairs aren't really a room in the house they are still a good place to have the climactic ending of the woman falling down the stairs at the end.

We included the kitchen as one of the rooms for the fight to happen in because it is a generic place that is used so we felt we had to include it. We think that it is generic because there are many sharp things like knives so many films use the same generic scenario of having the man attacking the woman for whatever reason and then she grabs a knife from the kitchen to defend her self. although this wont happen in our film we just wanted a few various places to have the argument. 

We chose the main room because it is supposed to be a tranquil place of happiness and a place in the home were you can rest and socialize. So we decided to upset this balance by having an argument happen in this room and the place being destroyed.

Like I said before although this is not an actual room the main part of the film will happen here, the dramatic ending.

This part of the house will be used for the shot at the end where the woman either trips or is pushed down the stairs.

Exterior

We only have one exterior scene and that only consists of a crane shot starting from the top of the outer part of the house and leading down to the window in the kitchen. This will be a simple establishing shot so it will only last a few seconds. Here is a picture of the exterior of the house:

Set pieces

A photo frame will be needed for Richard to smash and tear the photo out of it and rip it in half.

These glasses will be set out for the romantic meal that Alice had prepared and the one Richard was late for.

The wine bottle will be there to add effect to the romantic meal the actors wont actually be drinking it and the brand in the picture wont necessarily be the brand that we buy its just an example. We chose red wine because it ties in well with Christianity.

We had the idea of having either the meal already set out or just having the plates in the places where they were going to be sat. We prefer the second option because then we wouldn't have to try and set out the food the same each time we came to filming were the dinner table is in shot.

We hade the thought of the clock because then Alice can be sat there monitoring the time and growing more impatient. We chose a digital clock because it is easier to show time passing.

We had the cutlery for the obvious reason of that we don't want to think that our characters eat with their hands and especially at a romantic meal.

We chose the candle because its a romantic meal and they are normally light by candles but we were also going to have them melted so as to show how long Alice has been sitting there waiting for Richard.

We also later on thought about using a Christian's Advent Wreath, this has four red candles and one white in the centre, We felt that if we had two red and one white candle then it would still link to Christianity but not too strongly to over come the romantic meal.

The flowers in the middle of the table....... come on it is a romantic meal so they are needed.

Film Script

Here is the film script:

Behind Closed Doors Screenplay

Film Treatment 'Behind Closed Doors'

This post will contain our film treatment. Now our film has been commissioned we can get on with things like props, locations, auditions for actors. So we have a lot of work to do now. But anyway heres the film treatment.

Behind Closed Doors Treatment

Target Audience Research and TAP

For this post I will be talking about the target audience that we will be aiming our film at. We had to do this last year and also supply and TAP (target audience profile) to go with it.

Target Audience:

Behind closed doors is our short film and we are aiming it at 17 to 30 year olds, both male and female, as this is the age we feel most violent domestic relationships happen. We have also chosen this age range because it is appealing with the tension, suspicion and thriller aspects. Also because it is the statistical age in which domestic's happen this short is also an eye opener to make people aware of this violence.

Age Certificate:

Because of the violence and implied violence of this short our age certificate is 15, with further research into films like ours we found "Enough" which is a feature length film with the age certificate of PG13, so putting our short at 15 gives us plenty of leeway to connote and show some violence. Also the fact that there may be swearing in the film as well also makes it into a 15 plus certificate.

BBFC Ratings

Films that fit into the '15' category can contain certain things:

- strong violence but not incredible amounts of gore.

- Frequent strong language

- Strong verbal reference to sex

- drug taking

- sexual nudity

- sex can be shown but not too graphic

- only brief sexual violence

- Discriminatory behaviour and language

TAP (target audience profile)

This is Katie West and Adam Smith. She is 20 years of age while Adam is 22. They have been together since college. Adam studied business and maths which then lead him into an office job while Katie is still looking for work. She studied Drama through college.
        
Katie and Adam both have hobbies: Katie enjoys going to the theatre, art and reading books like "Murdoch Mysteries" and "Mortal Instruments" while Adam enjoys watching tele and a bit of sport like football and gold while he sometimes enjoys some time to play musical instruments like the keyboard.

         They both enjoy watching thrillers and horrors that have good twists at the end that they never see coming or have good jump scares. One of Katie's favourite films stars Jennifer Lopez: "Enough",which is a suspense film, as its the woman who takes a stand while Adam rather likes "Taken" where the man goes out to save his daughter and is the hero at the end of it.

        Being still young and at the start of their relationship Katie and Adam have many arguments about many silly things that often cause huge heated shouting matches that can make either Adam or Katie storm out or throw something because they are under stress from work or money problems. They have just moved in together, Adam owns a BMW which is his pride and joy, while Katie owns a small mini which she likes as its simple and gets her from A to B: which is often shopping.

Real media products that back our choice of age certificate:

Fifty shades of grey

Although this film isn't the same as my film it still has a male who is seen as the more dominant character and a female who is submissive. The target audience for this film is females in the age brackets of around 15-24 + 35-45+ .

The gambler 

The gambler comes under the thriller, drama and crime category and is aimed at males at around the ages of 15-24. This could be used as evidence to suggest that males in this age bracket like these kinds of films.

Film Idea Pitch (Commissioning Interview)

After a week of planning with my group we now have to pitch our film idea and try and win over our examiner (Mr Hood) and have our film commissioned. 

Evaluation

I think that the pitch went incredibly well and ended with our film being commissioned. In the end we didn't agree on using just one of our film ideas instead we combined the four so that it contained elements of all of our films.

While we pitched our idea Mr Hood gave us pros and cons on our film idea so that we could then input new ideas to make our film even better. He suggested that we should have a more in-depth storyline, so instead of one twist maybe try and have several. He suggested that to go with him being with a women it should also imply that he was with her to help get an engagement ring. But to pull this off we would need very good actors to help add more emotion to the scenes because words wouldn't be enough to get the storyline that we want across.

Also Mr Hood suggested that we use our own sound effects this year instead of using the pre-recorded ones on the sound editor because we didn't use our own last year.