Beginning to Film - Danielle Irwin

After completing the preliminary task, it was time to prepare for the main thing. This involved casting, storyboarding, and scripting. We chose to use Sophie's older sister, to make it different to other student's films, who mainly used similar aged actors. This gave a more professional edge, as it was more believable and made more sense for her to act as a worried mother. We also used Sophie's niece for the young girl's part, as she would listen to Sophie, and work well with Emma, her mother. In some parts, it was hard getting Charley-Faye, the young girl, to do exactly what we wanted, being only 3 years old, but we tried hard to get the shots how we intended them to be. The third 'actor' we used was Sophie's dog, making our thriller more interesting as it meant we could expand on our ideas, and try out different things. Some parts were difficult to film with the dog, so we had to do it quite a number of times to get the result we were looking for.

After choosing our actors, it was time to storyboard our thriller introduction. We worked together doing it, working out what angles and movement we would use, and sketching images to represent these. There were no problems completing the storyboards, however, a week was wasted due to waiting for a weekend when our actors were available. We tried to make as much use out of this week as possible, pushing away the fact that we needed to get on with the filming and editing.

The third thing that was part of the planning stages, was writing the script. Fortunately, our introduction had few lines of dialogue, so this didn't take us much time or thought. It mainly involved of a small bit of interaction between the mother and daughter in the first scenes, and the mother on the telephone later on.

We picked a graveyard as our location, because of the eerie connotations they have. We wanted this atmosphere to be relatively obvious, as the other hints that something bad was going to happen, were quite subtle. Our props gave hints like this, such as the red balloon and coat, signalling danger. We had expected to get the balloon filled with helium, so it blew in the wind well, however, the shop wouldn't fill them with helium, due to the type of balloon they were. This posed to be a bit of a problem, as it wasn't very windy, meaning the balloon dragged along the ground at some parts, not giving the effect we were looking for. As well as the graveyard, we also used a garden for the home-movie style shots, to give a friendly, recognisable feel to the shots.

The first problems we hit, were the other people in the graveyard, just walking past or visiting a grave. We didn't want to seem loud and disrespectful, filming in this location, so we chose a quiet, less visited corner. Another problem was keeping the continuity. We experienced the importance of noticing this when doing our first shots of Emma and Charley-Faye walking. In the first few we did, there was a car in shot, and by the time we filmed from a different direction and angle, the car had gone, meaning we had to do the first shots again. This wasted time, but we had to make sure it looked natural and realistic.

We were surprised at how easy it was to work with Charley-Faye and Riley, the dog, as we were expecting to have trouble getting them to do the correct things. Sometimes, it didn't go exactly as planned, although this occasionally turned out for the better. For example, Riley was supposed to simply drop the child's hat into Emma's lap, who actually ended up having to fight for it. When viewing it on the computer, we realised this looked a lot better. Many things turned out to be quite spontaneous, although we tried to follow the storyboard as well as we could, to ensure we used all the angles and movement we wanted to include. Something that wasn't planned, included the home-movie clips. The idea had been discussed during the planning stages, but it wasn't until we'd basically finished filming, that we thought we would try it out. It turned out well, and in my opinion, really emphasised the contrast of the happy, beginning scenes, and the edgier, uncomfortable scenes nearer the end.

Sophie, Charlotte and I all worked together well whilst filming, and sorted out disagreements easily by negotiating and choosing a mixture of all our ideas. An example of a shot that took a lot of thought between us all, was the worms-eye view of Emma and Charley-Faye's feet as they walked to the graveyard. It emphasised they were walking fast, and on their way somewhere. Charley-Faye is skipping, which is clear in this shot, showing she is a happy, carefree little girl. The eery, atmospheric music is relatively contrapuntal as at this point, nothing bad has happened. Another one of my preferred shots, is the wide shot of the balloon flying away, over the graveyard. It look us a long time to get it right, as it wasn't a very windy day, but the last try was suitable and effective for the closing shot.