Film Schedule

This is our Film Schedule. This will enable us to see exactly what will happen when we come to filming. The Film Schedule is really useful as it indicates; the scene, who it will feature, what props we are going to need  new and what costumes the actors will be wearing. We have given our self an average of four set ups we feel that this is suitable to the variety of shots we want to include in our relevant scenes. We have set our selves an hour to complete these shot as we feel that this suitable time to set up, shoot and make relevant changes if needs be.

Edited Screen Play the completed Version.

Prop Ideas

Beth will be wearing ripped tights like the example below. Her clothes will be dirty and scruffy.

This will be the featured shirt that the character Jack played by Tolga will be washing in the sink. In the real film we are planning for the shirt to be covered in blood but we will need to experiment with this as we want it to look effective and not unrealistic. 

This is the proposed diary book that will feature in the scene where Alice in writing in her diary about Beth. 

These are the shoes that Beth will be wearing in the opening scene. She will have one shoe on and the other one will be off laying upside down in the mud.   

This is Beth's dress that she will be wearing in the opening scene. We really like this dress and think its really suitable as it contrasts with the creepy shots of her laying dead.

 

Practising Shots

Here I took some pictures of my face with my eyes closed to resemble Beth in the Opening Scene.
She will look very peaceful but will her clothes will be dirty and muddy.

Experiments



In the opening sequence there will be a close up of Beth's hand partly submerged in water. As I'm playing the role of Beth I decided to take some pictures of my hand in a relaxed position. The pictures on the left, involved running my hand under some water hand so that it appears wet from the stream. This is a simple compostion on the hands behalf as the hand would not be tense it would be floppy and heavy as if it were dead.

Finalised Synopsis

The film will start off with a dead girl lying in a river bank. Her name is Beth Marwolaeth, she is a 17 year old student from St.Mary's School for girls.


The film is based on her death and will focus on the investigation of finding out who murdered her. There are 3 main characters who play a big part in the film Dave, Jack and Alice. The audience will be lead to believe that one of these characters has murdered Beth, and the next 3 opening scenes will suggest this. The first scene will be of Dave burning pictures that have been taking of Beth out and about that she obviously doesn't know about, in the background there will be a voice over of a forensic investigator examining Beth's body and explain to her boss that she has just found a scrunched up photo of Beth, in Beth's hand, this will show that Beth was with Dave before she died and make him look like the murder. 
 The next scene will be of Jack scrubbing his top in the sink trying to get blood off it, again in the background the forensic investigator will say to her boss that there are blood hand print on Beth's shirt, again this will make it out that Jack has something to do with the murder and will make the audience point the blame on Jack. The next scene will be of Alice has a ripped picture of her and Beth by her side, which will suggest they have had a disagreement, this will be backed up by the entry that Alice is writing in her diary about how much she hates Beth and her Mum and wished they were both dead. Again there will be a voice over of the forensic investigator saying they have found a letter in Beth's hand but are unable to read it due to water damage. The police won't know this yet but the audience will see that this paper is the same paper in Alice's diary. Throughout the film suspicion arises on Dave, because of his weird picture's of Beth and his obvious obsession over Beth, Jack because of his blood stain shirt, as the audience find out that before Beth's death Alice and Beth has been arguing about Beth's Mum having an affair with Alice's Dad, and Alice is trying to get it to stop but Beth was unaware anything was happening and didn't believe Alice, this was why Alice was so upset. 
 The audience will then learn that Jack was with Beth before she died, because he had found out by her, that she was fed up with life and was going to kill herself and Jack tried to stop her it was too late. The twist to the story will be that none of the main characters killed Beth, she committed suicide due to stress and depression, once she had found out about her mum and Alice's dad she just couldn't take it any more, so decided to kill herself.

Screenplay Format Development

Story Board

 

This is our rough story board where we showed our ideas of the shots.

Proposed Shots

Proposed Shots. on Prezi

These shots I took on my camera to get a scene of the feel of our opening shot. I really like this location as its practical to film at. There will be no disruption and is prefect for what we had in mind. We really like the water concept so this is great for that aspect. We also love the feeling of this setting its quite, dark and very isolated which is perfect for the death of Beth. Having seen the opening shot from "Brick" the surrounding are very run down, we feel that our location shows this two with the eerie tunnel and the mud and dirty water. Although having a lot more habitat around us than the scene from "Brick" I feel that this will work, once we include the shot of Beth it will add a whole different perspective and feeling. The only concern we have with this location is how deep the stream is. Because Beth ( myself ) will be filmed face down by the stream we need to find a suitable shallow part so that the filming can go smoothly. We are wondering whether the other side of the tunnel location would be more suitable and still has good shots and angles to film from.

There is a scene from "Brick" where there is an over the shoulder shot of someone holding a ripped photograph. I think that this is a really effective shot and I feel that this kind of shot will work well with the scene with DAVE holding the burning photograph with the bin in the background. I also like the ring binder pad in the background as a backdrop. I feel that this could work well in the scene where ALICE is writing in her diary.

Immediately after the top shot it fades into another shot over the top. I really like this transition and I think that this is a really effective effect. I would possible like to use this technique in our film.

Casting Shots

These are our Casting Shots of the characters.

                                                                Tolga Ocay  as  "Jack"

Dan Balaam  as  "Dave"

                                                                Rebecca Cox  as "Alice"
                                                             

Emily Betts (Myself)  as "Beth Marwolaeth"

The main reason that we decided to use ourselves within the film and not to include external actors, drama students firstly because it was a practical decision and we didn't want to get into the situation where we are all ready to start filming and the external characters were either unreliable or not committed. We feel by using ourselves we can rely on ourselves and will be easier to communicate within the group as we will understand our ideas and project better than externals actors.

Music Ideas

Whilst visualising our ideas we have been looking for some suitable music. We want some thing quite powerfull and eerie but with a emotional feeling. We don't want anything to upbeat or too dramatic that it make the scene appear silly.

These you tube videos have given us some ideas of the sort of music that we will create for our piece.

If you listen to the music to the opening of brick it has the soft emotional feeling that was suitable for this scene to show the dead body and how peaceful she looks.

Development

Film In Production on Prezi

This is a prezi that shows the developing ideas; the Casting roles, The Outline of the Film, Target Audience, A rough initial draft of the Screen Play and testing some fonts of the title of our film.

Rough Ideas

Once deciding that we wanted to create a Drama/Thriller. We made some notes on our opening sequence for our film. After I watched "Remember Me" with its dramatic opening scene I suggested that to draw our audience is to open with something powerful. Taking inspiration from the film "Brick" we all agreed that this had a powerful opening and had the effect of being very dramatic but in a simple way. We thought of this idea and worked on the idea that we could open with the scene of a dead body and the mystery of 3 suspects that you get a gilmps of in the opening two minutes.

Inital Ideas

We made a rough draft of our initial ideas. We didnt go into much detail but we discussed each point and idea then wrote it down for refrence.

Inspiration

After returning from the Christmas break my group and I sat down to start to finalise ideas for our film. We have decided to focus on our film being a thriller/drama. We want to start with a powerful opening that will capture the audiences attention and make them ask questions and want find out what happens.

Powerful and dramatic openings are key to drawing in the audience and capturing feeling and emotion within the first few minutes.

I have looked at Remember Me, Brick these films open with a dramatic scene that really draws you in and makes you hungry for more.