CONSTRUCTION: WOMAN AND DOLL IN MIRROR

Today we went to film the scene of the mirror, which shows the woman stroking the dolls hair in the reflection of the mirror. I directed the scene and Amber filmed whilst Georgina acted. We began by simply zooming into the mirror as the protagonist played and plaited the dolls hair, to show the connection and obsession she has with the doll. We then thought that it would be a better idea to pan up so we end up looking into the mirror with the protagonist, as if from her view point.
Instead of filming the protagonist from the front, we decided that we would film her over the shoulder as she looked into the mirror. This is in order to suggest her psychological state. She is essentially a very private person who hides her scared scarred psyche. She rarely lets others see her secret desires, such as fustrated desire to be a mother herself. As she gazes into the mirror, she is imagining herself as a mother, how others would see her if only she had a child herself. 

CONSTRUCTION: THE DOLL SCENES

Today we filmed the montage of scenes that show the woman and doll interacting together. They include a close up shot of the woman rocking the doll back and forth like a baby,  an over the shoulder shot of the woman stroking the back of the dolls head and a shot of the woman and doll playing together on the floor, with their shadows present on the back of the wall. These shots are all effective as they are unnerving and show her love and affection for this doll and demonstrate how she is treating it as if it is a real child.

SOCIAL GROUPS IN MY FILM

I chose to explain further these social groups in a PINTREST, I  focused on the five main social groups in my film.

The link to my pintrest:

http://www.pinterest.com/condwan/social-groups/

PLANNING: CHOOSING A DISTRIBUTOR

Metrodome is our chosen distributor. It is a leading, London based independent distributor known for releasing innovative, exciting titles, which challenge audiences and provoke critics.

According to Metrodome's publicity “from box office hits to cults, animation and arts releases, we’ll always deliver an unforgettable experience.” Recent releases include: The Nun (Nicloux, 2013), A Royal Affair (Arcel, 2012), Summer in February, (Menaul, 2013), In Darkness, (Holland, 2011) and Before The Fall, (Gansel, 2004). 

Our film seems to be a good match as it contains serious adult themes and is set in the aftermath of a war photographer's stint in the battle zone.

 

These are a selection of films distributed by Metrodome.

PLANNING: CALL SHEET

• Title of page: AS Media Studies Call Sheet for []
• Track:  Recorded sound Children playing.
• Shoot date:  25th January 2014
• Location: Playground
• IMAGE: 
  
  Playground in Esher

• Crew:Amber Saville, 07*** *** ***
• Crew: Connie Dwan 07*** *** ***
• Crew: Georgina Self 07*** *** ***
• Camera equipment: Cannon D600
• Lighting equipment Natural day lighting
• Props Doll
• Wardrobe casual clothes.
• Wardrobe Youthful casual clothes  

•  Track: Music soundtrack 
• Shoot date:  25th January 2014
• Location: Amber's home outside
• IMAGE:

• Crew:Amber Saville, 07*** *** ***
• Crew: Connie Dwan 07*** *** ***
• Crew: Georgina Self 07*** *** ***
• Camera equipment: Cannon D600
• Lighting equipment Natural day lighting
• Props Doll, bike and sweets
• Wardrobe casual clothes.
• Wardrobe Youthful casual clothes  

PLANNING: NAMING OUR FILM OPENING

We came up with many different titles of the film for example War Child, Mother of War and Down Will Come Baby. Although when we researched these names on iMDB they came up with recent films, therefore we had to think of our own original name. I made a Scoop-it  to look at names of films that we liked, other thriller names and names of famous war photography to get inspiration for our own.

PLANNING: CAMERA SHOTS

We decided we would try and find a good location to film to create realism for
the first scene where the woman is in the waiting room at a clinic. We
thought that one of the rooms at school would be useful as they have
posters around about different health issues which creates a believable mise-en-scene. We then set up the chairs like in a doctors waiting room and we got our
friends to do typical nervous movements. For example people were hitting
their pen and tapping their feet. This shows that these people are all
nervous as they are all waiting for results. We did a pan across the
girls from right to left to focus on each ones certain actions. This
experiment went successfully however we had difficulties making the
noises loud enough. We created a nervous atmosphere to create enigma.

CONSTRUCTION: PLANNING CAMERA ANGLES AND SHOTS

In our lesson today we went out and did some planning to decide on what sort of camera movements and shot types we could use for our opening sequence. We decided to focus mostly on the doll as she is the main prop for our opening sequence. We came across some difficulty with the location and after thinking about filming in parks or playgrounds, we came across a tree house. We tried a variety of camera movements such as panning, in order that we could see the location and the doll sitting in the tree house. We then zoomed through one of the windows and focused in on the doll. We found this very effective. We then did a tracking shot of the woman as she walks up and into the tree house and strokes the dolls face. Finally we did a point of view shot where the woman looks through the fence to ensure she is not being watched.

After doing this and looking over the footage we decided that it is vital that we use a dolly when filming all tracking shots.