29th October

Day two of filming:
Day two of filming was dedicated to the outside sections of the screenplay. we had to keep watch of the light and time as we had to make sure it didn't start getting dark while recording. Also, due to us recording in a public place we kept on having to re shoot sections because people would walk in from of the camera or be heard more clearly that any actual dialogue.




Due to technical issues we, unfortunately, do not have photos of the second day of filming.

28th October

Story board:




Filming day one:
On day one we completed the indoor filming. We ran into troubles when shooting in the bedroom due to lack of floor space for the tripod. Laughing was also a reoccurring issue. However overall the indoor shoot went well. We decided to dedicate separate days for the indoor and outdoor filming to make sure we didn't run out of sunlight or have drastic changes in lighting from shot to shot. Inside this isn't an issue but it is when we get to outdoor filming.

Photos:

Mind Trap - Filming Evidence

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20th October 2010

Shown below is our screenplay:

Mind Trap - Screenplay

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And our treatment. We made sure to consider the results from our survey by including a teen female protagonist and an idaa which is more plot heavy:

Mind Trap - Treatment

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*NOTE: The bolded section was added MArch 2011 for an extra scene

We also brainstormed ideas for our films tagline. We came up with a varity of ideas all of which are shown below:

13th October

During the last two theory lessons we have been looking at Postmodernism, style over substance and question society, and how it realates to out media product. Our short film questions how people see reality and if everyone sees the same thing. For example, is the way I see pink the same as someone else sees it? As well as this our film concentrates more on camera shots to convey the characters and the plot than the actual dialogue meaning it does use the idea of style over substance. Which is the complete opposite of our original idea which was very dialogue heavy and concentrated more on the plot than on how the whole thing looked.

As our flim is only allowed to be up to five minutes long we don't have much time in which to develop a plot which mean we will have to use style and mise-en-scene instead of developing a plotline meaning out text will probably end up being a postmodernist text.

Also, this week we were able to get all of the surveys returned to us. The results are shown below:

Most of the people we asked to complete the survey were in the 16-19 age bracket. This is because this age group is the easiest to get a hold of due to school. Also, this age group is our intended target audience so by asking more people in this bracket we will be able to get a better idea of what our target audience wants to see.


We made sure to ask an even amount of males and females to get an even response and not one made bias by the majority asked being a certain gender.


This question is important as if our target audience very rarely watch short films then our film would be unlikely to appeal to out audience. However everyone seemed to have watched short films fairly often in the past month.


Most of the people we asked said that watched short films online. This is good for us as we intend to put our film online to recieve feedback and this information means that we are likely to receive some sort of feeback for our short film.


This question was an important one as it would help us decide where we were going to put our film in order to get the most views. Unsurprisingly, youtube.com proved to be the most popular and, so we will upload our film onto youtube.


As we intend to make out film a psychological thriller it's important to know if our target audience would be interested in a film of this genre. Most are interested which means that our film appeals to our target audience.


For simplicity we were intending to use a female protagonist. However, as this goes againt common conventions we wanted to make sure that it wouldn't make people dislike the film. Most of the people we asked thought that a female protagonist would work, this may be because our target audience would appreciate the change. We also know, however, that a couple of the people we gave the survey to have a slighty feminist viewpoint, meaning that they would like to see a female protagonist. Also, many seemed to not care either way, which is good for us incase plans change and a male protagonist is used.


Once again, we asked his because the protagonist in psychological thrillers is normally male. However, probably because our target audience are teenagers, the idea of a teenage protagonist seems to be the most popular. This is good for us as we intended to us a teenage protagonist.


When it comes of psychological thrillers it's easy to take either a postmodern or plot heavy root and so we thought that this would a good question to ask. Most people voted for a plot heavy film, which could cause issues due to the short time limit.

Also, this week, we asked one of the people we gave our survey to if we could use them to compile an audience profile. They agreed and so the profile can be seen below:

Mind Trap - Audience Profile

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6th October

This week, we started to focus on one of our extra tasks. The ones we chose to do was a radio advert and poster, with us choosing to this week look at posters. Before planning what our poster will look like we decided to look at other posters from a similar genre (psychological thriller) so we can see the conventions used and discuss how we could use them in our own poster.

1) The Happening

This is the first poster we looked at and we both thought it was very effective. We liked the dark colour scheme and the low key lighting used as we thought that it made the image seem mysterious. Also the mise-en-scene makes the city looks like a ghost town, with the distorted walls closing in on the three people in the centre. From this poster we thought the most useful aspects to use in our own was the colour scheme and lighting. This is because both of these aspect give off a scary vibe and makes the people in the image look helpless which is what we want to go for with our own poster.

2) Waz

In this poster we liked the close up on the face and emphasis on the eyes as it cleary shows what the person is feeling. We also liked the font used for the title as it looked scratched in giving off a desperate and frightened vibe, one which refects Lucy's character. After looking at this poster and many others we also think it would be a good idea to have a tagline, as they draw the audience in and gives a sense of mystery.

3) Murderer

Dispite this being a foreign film we bth really liked this poster. Like in poster two is shows a close up on the face which we think is a very effective idea as it can portray a range of different emotions, making it a useful tool for many genres. Like in the the other two posters this poster also used low key light. We like this aspect because it gives and air of mystery and fear which would be useful in our own poster. WE are going to use dark colours and low key lighting to, in our case, give off a scared vibe.

From these three posters we have gained many ideas for our poster including the lighting, mise-en-scene and composition of the shot, for example, low key lighting gives off a sense of mystery which in our case would be concerning wheather or not Lucas is real.

29th September

This week we looked at a number of short films on youtube which, like ours, have Schizophenia as the main topic. We did this in order to compare own own ideas to them and to see if they are common place in a film of this genre (phyciological thriller).


Film one - Schizophrenia Short Film
In this film, black and white is used to show hallucinations and colour is used to show what is really going on and what everyone else can see. We were intending to do that in our film as we thought it would make it easier for the audience to understand what is going on. The hallucinations are made to stand out using both heavy dark makeup and dark clothing. Any voices you did hear in the film were muddled up and sounded unorganised, we thought that this was good as it reflects the mentality of the sufferer. By making the hallucinations more obvious and visable in throughout the film it makes the audience feel more sympathtic as it is like you are seeing the world through the schizophrenics eyes. Also, as the end of this film they go through the events again how the rest of the world would see it, we liked this idea.


Film two - Schizophrenia: A Short Film
In this film, you can't always hear or see the hallucinations the sufferer is having, instead having to use his reactions to try and work out what is being said. This makes you more aware or just how violent his reactions are which makes you feel sorry for the sufferer. However, we thought, that the fact that for the most of the film you couldn't hear or see the hallucinations was actually a weakness as as lot mopre could have been done if we could, we did like the idea of just seeing his reactions, but thought the voices should have been used more. However when you did hear voices they were crazed and angry.

Film three - Paranoid Schizophrenic
In this film the lighting used in low key, whereas in the other two more naural lighting. the low key lighting made the whole film more frightening as well as the fuzziness of the movie. However as we are using black and white for a lot of our film we think that using low key light could make it hard to see what is going on.

22st September

In our theory lessons we have been looking at how genders are represented in the media as well as 'the male gaze', 'the female gaze' and 'the feminie mystique'.

When applying these theories to our new ideas for our short film we can see that the male gaze is not used as our female characters are covered up, due to the cold weather in which the film is set. As well as this the majority of the film is set outside meaning coats will be worn which, if functional normally don't show off the female body.

The Female gaze also isn't used as, once again, due to the cold weather in which the short film is set the man will be covered up meaning our character isn't being used for 'the pleasure of women'. As well as this our male character is quite sinister which is goes against the idea of what most women like to see in men.

However, it could be said that there is evidence for 'the feminie mysique' as both female characters are sensitive and vunerable with Lucy eventually giving into her hallucinations and Roxanne being shown as consently concerned for Lucys wellbeing. Lucy's vunerability and fear will be shown through shakey camera work and close ups on her face in order to convery her expression and emotions.

This week we also conducted a reasearch via a survey to find out what our potential audience woudl like to see. This is shown below:

Mind Trap - Audience Questionnaire

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We gave this survey to 20 people, the results are shown as pie charts below: