Final Makeup

Final Makeup

Doing Meg's final makeup for the hospital scene shoot.

Actor Profiles

Actor Profiles

Meg Dobson : Rose

Meg is ideal for the role because she is a teenage girl, connoting Rose's vulnerability and innocence.  She also has brown hair and eyes, conforming to the dark nature and colour palette of our opening, and she has a small frame implying weakness and her inability to defend herself.

Tony Langan : Rose's dad

Tony was cast as Rose's dad as he is fairly tall, making him appear threatening in comparison to Meg.  He also has a Glaswegian accent, stereotypically connoting aggression and violence, enhancing our presentation of Rose's dad to be threatening and dangerous to Rose.

David Chidlow : Doctor

We cast David in the role of Rose's doctor as he was ideal for the role with his look conforming to many of the traditional expectations of a doctor, quickly and effectively informing the audience to his role within the film.  David has grey hair making him appear much older than Rose and connoting his authoritative role in her life.

Costume and Makeup

Costume

Rose

For the majority of our opening, our protagonist will wear dark, plain clothing to fit with our colour palette. As she is a middle-class teenager, she will wear fairly nice clothing, however, we do not want her wear very expensive garments as this will contradict her situation too much. In addition to this, we want her to wear plain clothing so that it won't distract from the focal point of the opening; the character herself.

In most of the scenes, she will wear a similar outfit to this, however, we will need to change the top (as we use mostly mid-shots, so you can only see her top) to show the passing of time throughout. 

She will wear jeans and trainers as well as this is typical of a girl her age.

For the final scene, our protagonist is seen in a hospital room, and so in order to make it seem more realistic, we will dress her in a hospital gown, such as this one. To create a sense of verisimilitude, we will also give her red socks as this is what patients wear in modern-day hospitals.

Rose's Dad

Rose's dad's costume will only be seen in one of the scenes, so he will only have one costume. We will dress him in dark clothing as well, so that he won't look out of place with the dark colour palette used throughout the rest of the opening. 

Doctor

The doctor is only seen in the last scene of our opening. She will wear a white lab coat as this will immediately indicate to the audience that she is in the medical profession. The use of white will contrast to our earlier use of dark colouring. 

Make-up

Rose

As Rose is being abused by her father, we decided to put bruises on her to create a sense of verisimilitude.

We used purple, brown, red, yellow and green eyeshadow to create these bruises and test how realistic they look. We started by making a point of impact with the red, then built up the surrounding area with lighter colours. We used green and yellow around the outside to make it look more authentic. After this we embellished our bruises with other colours to add detail and make them look more natural. We also varied the depth of colour and size. As the eyeshadow we used was sparkly, we had to cover the bruises with translucent powder, which also made them more matte. 

For this, we used red eyeshadow in the outer corner of her eye. Then we used brown underneath and on top of her eyelid. We also added red on her bottom lash line. 







For this, we used red eyeshadow on top of her eyelid and brown underneath. We used a darker brown to contour the natural lines on her cheeks.






For this, we added to the make-up from the first eye. We used a dark brown on the inside corner of her eye to make it look sunken. We also added more brown under her eye and more red and brown to her eyelid. We used the same technique as before to contour under her eye. 

This is Aimee applying the make-up to Meg's eyes. 

Camera Testing

Camera Testing

Our initial idea was to create a dolly system using two hula hoops and a skateboard of some description.  However, this idea was deemed to be unrealistic as actually building the dolly system was difficult to do effectively.

However, we did keep the idea of using a circular mechanism in order to create a smooth 360° shot.  First we tested footage of handheld camera work with no circular guide or wheeled object

 Firstly, we tried circling around Cassidy with a      handheld camera. For this, we did not use any guide to make sure that we went around in a perfect, smooth circle. We also did not use any editing software to make it look more stable. 

 Next, we sat Aimee, holding the camera, on a wheely chair as I pulled her around Cassidy in a circle. Again, we did not edit the footage after to make it look less shaky. 

 Thirdly, we created a harness system to make a steady circle by balancing the weight of the cameraperson with another person. This was slightly smoother however, as we still had to walk, the footage was still shaky. 

Finally, we used 'Warp Stabiliser' in Premiere Pro to enhance the stability of the video. We found that this created the best final product, however this was filmed with a handheld camera and so we will need to practice walking around our actor smoothly and steadily. 

Location Recce

Location Recce

Aimee's Sister's Bedroom:

Our piece opens on a shot of the protagonist sitting on the edge of her bed looking forwards. For this we decided to use Aimee's sister's bedroom we chose it because it is a fairly plain room with white walls and white furniture so will be easy to make it look sparse.  In the room there are two windows on the opposite wall from the bed meaning we will be able to naturally light the actress' face.

Bedroom Door:

One of our shots involves the protagonist leaning against the inside of their door barring someone from entering for this we decided to again use my sister's room for continuity.  Although the door is again opposite the windows it is a lot darker than the bed and we can film later in the day to give us more control over lighting and allows to make this shot darker.

Aimee's Kitchen:

There is one shot in our opening in which the camera circles around the protagonist inside a kitchen.  We decided to use Aimee's kitchen as it was again in her house, enabling us to film everything in one day and it also fit the look we were looking for in the kitchen scene.

Aimee's Bathtub:

We are using the bathtub for the scene in which the protagonist submerges herself into the water and the title appears on the screen.  The bathtub we have chosen is also in Aimee's house limiting the locations in which we need to film. this will give us more time to get the shots we need.

 Dunton Green Tunnel:

 This is for the scene in which the protagonist has ran away from home and is hiding in a tunnel. We chose this because it fits the dirty, dingy look we are aiming for.  The white walls will contrast her dark appearance adding to the creep nature of the scene.

Dunton Green Tunnel Wall:

This is for the scene in which the protagonists face is grasped by an unknown antagonist.  This wall is in the tunnel in which we will film the above scene.  Although there is limited space within the tunnel this shot is a close-up so limited space will not affect filming.

Dunton Green Bus Stop:

This bus stop is for the scene in which the camera circles around the protagonist.  This is a good location because it is a stereotypical bus stop, demonstrating her vulnerability as a young person alone in public.  It is also a 3 minute walk from the tunnel meaning we can film all of these scenes in one shoot.

School Medical Room:

This for the final scene of our opening in which the protagonist is seen to be in a hospital room.  This is a convenient location as it in our school and looks like a hospital room.

School Hall:

This is for the scene where she stands on the stage and the camera circles around her.  We will put out chairs in the main floor area because there will be muffled applause to accompany.  This is also in school so will be easy to fit in to our shooing schedule.

Park:

This is for the scene in which the camera circles around the protagonist standing in a park.  We chose this location because it is in our local park. For this location you can use 100% natural lighting, reflecting light where needed.

Bridge in Park:

This is a good bridge as, like with the tunnel, it is very dingy looking and has a good view of the river.  In this location there may be limited space for filming but we will complete test footage to assess its suitability for the shot we require.

Casting Rose

Casting Rose

We got a selection of people to audition for the role of Rose in our opening. We all decided that we wanted teenage girl with long hair. We wanted her to be pale to make her look slightly sickly and to hint that she doesn't get taken many places where she would get a tan. We wanted long hair which can be made to look scruffy to show that looking pristine isn't her main concern. We also wanted the actress' hair to be dark to fit with our dark colour palette.
We did not do any acting screen tests as our protagonist does not do much in our opening apart from stare forward.


Meg Dobson

Age: 16
Height: Mid-height
Hair colour: Brown
Eye colour: Brown
Skin colour: White

Meg has long dark hair, dark eyes and pale skin, similarly to what we are looking for. The long hair means that it can be make to look scruffy. 

Shannon O'Doherty

Age: 16
Height: Small
Hair colour: Brown
Eye colour: Green
Skin colour: White

Shannon has very long hair, which is also good for the scruffy look, however it is too light and we are looking for a darker colour palette. 

 






























Aimee Langan

Age: 17
Height: Small
Hair colour: Brown
Eye colour: Blue
Skin colour: White

Aimee has long dark hair and pale skin, creating an effective contrast. However, her eyes are too bright for what we are looking for. We also thought it would be easier if we got someone who wasn't in our group to act so we could all contribute more to the filming.

































In the end, we decided on using Meg as our actress. She fit closely to the look that we were going for, she also seemed the most excited and willing to take part in filming. Meg is also a good choice as she is not a drama student so there is less risk of her over-acting.

Target Audience

Target Audience

When deciding on our target audience, we tried to create as detailed a profile of them as possible. Therefore, we considered not just what films they would enjoy but also their age, lifestyle and other interests.


As we had already done research into openings similar to the one we want to make, we knew that the films our target audience would most likely enjoy were psychological thrillers and critically acclaimed films such as 'Room', 'Silence of the Lambs', and 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'.

We also thought that they would watch similar, well known T.V. programmes with complex storylines such as 'Westworld', 'Luther' and 'Game of Thrones'.

We thought that it would be important to think about what music they would listen to, as music can often be used as a signifier of a genre. We decided that this would be popular yet meaningful music such as 'Green Day', 'Ed Sheeran' and 'Adele'.
From this we thought that our target audience would be 20-35 year olds of any gender and likely to be working or middle class.

Lighting Testing

Lighting Testing

Tunnel

This tunnel is one of the location we are using within our film opening. We wanted this scene to have an eerie feel to it. It is also an external so we are relying on natural lighting, therefore, time of day is very important to the scene.

The first two photos were taken around 3.20 in the afternoon during February.  However, we decided that this was too bright and did not have the right feel.

We then went back to the tunnel at 5.30 once the sun had set a little and it was darker.  This lighting is much more appropriate for the look we are going for in our opening.  Although this lighting raises the possibility of the footage being grainy, there are lights throughout the tunnel to reduce this risk.

Park

For the Park scenes we wanted the lighting to have a very stark and cold feel giving quite a harrowing introduction to our film opening. The pictures taken were taken 2 o'clock and 4 o'clock respectively, due to the seasonal weather there is not much difference in the lighting so we decided to film this scene at the best time for our filming schedule.

For the park scenes we decided to film at around 4 o'clock in the afternoon.  This was firstly because it fitted in very well with our filming schedule but also because during the February
time of year when we were filming our opening the cloud cover over the park gave a very even and cold lighting meaning we could use natural lighting to film our scenes.

Aimee's House

For the scenes in Aimee's house we wanted to use the lighting to complement the white colouring of these scenes and so thought it best to use white natural lighting as opposed to the yellow tinge of most electric lights.  The photo shown was taken at 5 o'clock in the after noon but we thought it was a bit too dark so we decided to film this scene during the morning/midday when the sun is on this side of the house and it is brighter.

All the scenes at in Aimee's house were filmed during the day between 11 o'clock and 2 o'clock this was so that we could make the most out of the natural lighting there were big windows opposite where we filmed both the bedroom and the bathroom scenes which enabled us to light these scenes.  For the opening shot we also used a lamp to add to the natural lighting, creating low key lighting over Rose's face.