Preparation:
Prior to filming, we had found a large, blue notice board in a classroom at school and after speaking to the teacher, discovered it was not in use and thus we decided to make it the basis for our media piece. We got to work printing and cutting out photographs, articles and reports which we would use on our thriller, police investigation board. The thriller board was planned to be quite organised with a methodical layout in order to try and replicate the precise thought layout of a possible detective.
Initially we started with a large A2 Map of the world which we discussed that we wanted to place in the centre of the board and have links to a variety of different locations for each of the different girls. However, we decided that it would be more effective if the disappearances had occurred in the same location over the years. This would suggest the possibility that there is a culprit in the local area who had evaded capture for three years. We then rearranged the board to use much smaller maps from a Atlas of the UK to show locations and links to the investigation.
We used each of the missing posters of the girls as a central point, with Molly's poster being the slightly larger size of A3 to emphasise the focus being the most recent disappearance.
We decided to focus the photographs on Molly Taylor (Charlotte Webb), a young girl that disappeared on the 20th October 2014. We wanted to show the links of her disappearance to 2 other girls that also went missing on this exact date in 2012 and 2013. We chose to have these two girls in the bottom two corners as they were not intended to be the main focus of the filming, but more as a way to build tension and show clear connections.
In the top left corner we chose to use some police reports, fingerprints and possible links to a offender of the crimes. We wanted to have a outlined shadowed character with a question mark in to create narrative enigma. This added to the thriller, police element which we wanted the opening sequence to capture.
Filming:
Both locations for initial filming would be at my house. For the thriller piece, we wanted the investigation board to have a very clinical feel with a white background, a desk and bright lighting which worked well on a wall in my house. With the horror, my garage had a old and broken desk which we felt had a eerie atmosphere for the stalker's board. We began with filming the thriller piece today. Initially we had problems with lighting and were unsure whether to use main lights or just smaller lamps- after debate we chose to have both on in order to have a brighter image. We wanted to use a wide variety of different shots and get multiple versions of these. This was to ensure that we had more footage than required, allowing us to decide which of these were most effective and use only these shots. Here are some of the shots used:
Establishing Shot: The shot emphasised the entire board in relation to the 'police office' and allows the audience to understand the relationship between this location and other locations shown in the opening sequence.
Hand-Held Shot: We filmed some of the shots without a tripod. This, whilst making the shots slightly shaky, makes the audience feel like they are part of the investigation and makes it seem more realistic and relatable.
Close-ups: We used a variety of different close up shots such as: extreme close ups and medium close ups. These were used to focus the audiences attention to certain areas of the investigation board and to involve them in what is happening, allowing them to understand the extent of the situation by making them feel quite uncomfortable.
Low angle shots: We used low angle shots to emphasise the board as being a dominant prop, with it being so large panning up makes the audience feel small and helpless to the investigation.
Tilt: Using the tripod, we made some tilted shots in order to show other areas of the investigation board and create the illusion that not only the board is on going, but also the search to find the missing girls.
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