Mise-en-scene and Location

Location from Mattie Goddard

This post was written by Mattie Goddard.

Costumes

In terms of planning costumes, we wanted completely opposing looks for the two characters. At the beginning of the film, in the bathroom/'funeral' scene we want the character Angelo to be dressed smartly, as if dressed for a funeral, here is a sketch of the potential and ideal costume:

We managed to source the clothes to create this costume; a white shirt, a red tie, black trousers, a black pinstriped jacket with a black fedora hat.

This is what Arthur's character, Angelo will be wearing as well as the jacket
and fedora hat.
We have chosen this costume idea as it links with the narrative of the film. We have the idea of the bathroom scene being Angelo's own personal funeral for his victim. The darkness of the suit he is wearing correlates the darkness of his character and his past and future actions. The white colour of the shirt under the jacket is symbolic of his underlying purity that gets consumed by the darkness of his suit and the metaphorical darkness. Furthermore, the red tie is symbolic of the danger he is about to be engrossed into, almost as if it is a indistinct symbol.

For the character Annie Floyd is playing, we decided to let her chose her own costume and wear her own clothes. This is because she is playing a more vulnerable 'normal' character that the audience are hopefully going to relate to as she is a realistic character. This is why we made the decision for her to choose her own costume, as it would appear more naturalistic as she is essentially playing a character not majorly different to herself.
This post has been written by Mattie Goddard.

Thriller opening - Ascendancy

UPDATED Q5

How did you attract/ address your audience?

We decided on choosing the particular target audience of males and females aged between 14 and 20 years old. However, I feel our film would be aged 18+ if the actors playing the characters were professional actors of an older age, but because the actors in our film are aged 17, it is less likely to appeal to anyone older than 20 years old. This is because it would not be taken
seriously enough by people older than the actors as they would be viewed as too immature to take on the serious roles that are involved in our film. 

The narrative techniques that we have included involve the main character having a psychologically disturbing persona, this is shown from the opening scene to which the character played by Arthur walks into his bathroom where a dead girl is lying in the bath. Which he then proceeds to stroke her hair and place a ring on her finger. These subtle but effective actions that the character carries out help build the character profile of him being an enigma which helps engage the audience from the start. We also use a non-linear narrative to hook the audience in the attempt for them to want to know more, to intrigue them from the beginning. A limited use of di

alogue is shown
in the opening 2 minutes because we decided to use the camerawork, mise-en-scene and editing as a hook sintead of hooking the audience from the use of dialogue. I also think that having a limited range of dialogue doesn't give away too much to the audience about the plot, which is another technique in engaging the audience and hoping for them to question the plot and having the need to know more. 

The opening to our thriller entices the audience by involving a major cliff hanger, the last scene in the the 2 minutes shows the character played by Arthur receiving a phone call to which he responds to in a blunt, snappy and frightened way. He is then shown walking away, to which the audience is left without knowing where he is going or who he is going to see. The suspense and fear that is created form the ending shots is an attempt to foreshadow the dark events that are apparent to occur within the rest of the film.

Certain aspects of the mise-en-scene used within the film are used to enagage the audience, for example the common re-occurrence of the use of the prop of candles that are shown in several scenes. It could be viewed from an audience perspective that the candles are being used as a motif, although the candles were not apart of the initial script/plot. They definitely add a sense of mystery and eeriness through the lighting aspect that they create. However, they may also be viewed with a range of alternative connotations. For example, candles can be associated with death as well as juxtaposing the idea of candles being associated with romance and love. Candles are associated with death through the religious act of lighting a candle to dispel darkness and the flame is used to take the prayers of the living to heaven. By the leading character in the film having the candles lit (especially when surrounding the dead body) could suggest he is using them in the religious response to death. This also links to the use of another prop in the film, The Bible. However, candles are also associated with romance and a dark connotation that may also be associated with the film, is that the main character has romantic connections with the people he kills. Furthermore, this idea could be linked to the actions of the main character seductively strokes her hair and the way he gently caresses her hand when he places the ring on her finger. The ring may also be a symbol that he feels obliged to her and wants to romantically commit himself to her. These connotations involve dark and psychologically disturbing ideas that result in having an age limit on our film, therefore not suggesting the film is suitable to people younger than the age of 14.
Particular technical codes that we have used to engage the audience is through the use of camerawork. The camerawork in our film uses a range of close ups, which are particularly us
ed during intense moments within the scenes. For example, when the character played by Arthur strokes Annie's hair, it cuts from an establishing/mid shot to then a close up, which shows the use of match on action as well as engaging the audience. A close up does this through guiding the audience's eyes to the action on the screen, and the fact the actors are physically closer to the camera makes the audience feel more apart with what is happening on screen as they feel more involved within the situation because they are more connected to whats happening on screen.

Question 6

Q 6 from Anna Dunbar

Question 7

Technical skills:

In terms of the use and improvement of the technical skills within our preliminary to the full product, there is clear evidence of enhanced confidence in particular areas such as camerawork, sound and editing. To continue, the uses of camera work in our preliminary showed basic skill and lacked sophistication.  As shown in the first screenshot, which is out of focus, the phone is positioned awkwardly in the frame and there is a visible reflection in the phone. In comparison to the shot of the phone from our full product, which is positioned well in the frame, this makes the shot look thought out as well as the phone being easy to read and the simplicity of the shot, which adds to the eerie and suspicious tone of the film.

The sound is a major improvement within the full product in comparison to the preliminary. This is due to the fact we used appropriate sound equipment which included a 'dead cat' microphone instead of just using the mic on the DSLR camera which made the dialogue in the preliminary almost un-hearable. Even though we struggled with the clearness of the dialogue in the full product, because we filmed outside which meant the mic would pick up some of the background noise such as cars passing by and the wind. However, this barrier was soon solved through the use of editing, we decided to use the technique of ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement). We re-recorded the dialogue that was filmed outside to match the actors speaking in the film and edited into the film to match the movement of their mouths.  



Another noticeable improvement of the use of editing within our full product was the use of match-on-action which made the cuts a lot less jumpy in comparison to the preliminary task. An example from our full product is the particular scene where the character played by Arthur is stroking the dead girl (played by Annie) in the bath. As he pulls his hand away from her hair, when going from the close up back to the establishing shot you see his hand still moving away from her head. This is a clear example of the use of match-on-action which makes the editing a lot less jumpy and helps make the shots make sense. This compares to the preliminary task in which there is a lack of match-on-action. For example in this series of shots where the character played by Mattie is grabbing the bag to give to the character played by Gabe, the shot jumps from an eye-level, mid-shot to a low, close-up shot of the bag. Editing another shot into this scene could solve the jumpy cut, this would have been solved by the clearer understanding of match-on-action and by spending more time on the shots and making clear plans before the shooting process begins.

Key points that have been learned:

The major difficulties I found with the creating process of the final product were meeting the tight deadlines and the heavy workload that accompanied the deadlines. In comparison to the preliminary task which didn’t involve any research and only a limited amount of planning and evaluation. This made the quality of work for my preliminary less thorough because it seemed less important. The stress that was caused from the amount of work needed for the end product has made me realise the importance of planning ahead and keeping to the deadlines to avoid work building up and creating more work for yourself, leading to more stress. Because falling behind meant that some blog posts were rushed and had lacked in quality as well as quantity. Creating an engaging narrative was not an issue for both the preliminary and the full product, however the issue was successfully telling the story on camera. With the preliminary the story is very unclear, especially due to the unclear dialogue due to sound difficulties. The narrative is more understandable within the full product due to more planning and having more time on the product, however I still feel that successfully representing the narrative was a barrier for both products. When working to a specific brief with the full product it was obvious with what was needed/wanted but we still had the creativity and freedom within the thriller genre. In comparison to the preliminary which lacked in creativity and there was a slight restriction in what we could/wanted to create.

Question 4