After this stage of developing a strong storyline in which I had chosen to stick to, I then had the task of choosing the setting, the actors, props (if there were to be any) and script.
As the film genre is a thriller, I didn’t want to have much dialogue in the opening 2 minute clip as I was aiming to build up the suspense of the viewer, and in the thrillers I had researched and the questionnaire feedback I had received, many of the viewing audience believed more suspense was built up through little dialogue than lots of dialogue. As of this I chose to have a small piece at the introduction of the actors when they first appear on screen. Nick says to Chris “what are we going to do for this photography assignment then?” In which Chris replies, “I dunno, but we should find somewhere soon I reckon.” I felt this gives a little insight into the storyline without having too much dialogue it doesn’t make the genre clear.
To choose the setting of this film, I visited certain places around my local village of Woodhall Spa, as I was aware that there were many old disused buildings which could be host to my film. I took photographs of two main places which I thought were very close to what I wanted, a disused chicken shed, and an old farm building. (These photos are attached to this document). The old farm building had more colour and life to it than the chicken shed did. This wasn’t what I was looking for, I wanted a gloomy dark looking setting which was a large building that had room to run about and around in. This was the complete opposite of the old farm building, which was small and cramped. Therefore I chose the chicken shed. It had multiple entrances and was a long, dark, empty building which was exactly what I was looking for. I chose this as the setting, chose my actors, spoke with them and arranged a date for filming. I booked the equipment, which was the camcorder and tripod and gathered the two props for the film. These were the digital SLR camera which Nick carries and drops during the film, and the blue light shade from outside the chicken shed which Chris throws into the shed.
My management of time, I personally feel could have been a lot better than it was. I left the filming a little later than I would have liked to have done, looking back at the project. I didn’t leave myself enough time to have another day of filming if problems occurred on the first day, or when uploading the footage onto the computer. This meant that when all of my footage was uploaded and ready for editing, I only had a short period of time, a week, to edit it all. However, during this week, I feel I managed my time greatly as I didn’t rush with the editing, and finished it all with a day left to spare, to add finishing touches and go back and change certain things about it, if I felt they weren’t as I would have liked.
Here are the links to some of the photos i took during planning.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/liamallen/3056088741/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/liamallen/3056086447/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/liamallen/3056911414/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/liamallen/2958242797/
