WELCOME TO MY BLOG!

CHARLOTTE COPPELLOTTI

CANDIDATE NUMBER 1812

CLAREMONT FAN COURT SCHOOL 64680

Welcome!

My production team included: Jess Foster 1820, Ellie Smart 1859 and Millie Wyatt 1874

My brief was to produce a film opening that lasted a maximum of two minutes. The title of our film is Camera-Shy, a thriller which explores the teenage life of Sarah and her experience as she deals with a every young girl's nightmare: a stalker following her every moves, capturing her everyday life on camera for reasons that go unkown. The threat begins to invade Sarah's inner thoughts to the extent where she feels unsafe in her own home, and uneasy everywhere. Her anxious thoughts are proven rational when she is at her bedroom window and catches sight of a camera flash aimed up at her from across the street. 

(INSERT YOUTUBE CLIP HERE)

EDITING

We used Final Cut Pro to complete the editing of our film, and Ellie and Millie did the majority of editing, as they had both used the application before and so knew how it worked. Jess and I contributed by sharing ideas with what editing works well and what could be tweaked. We needed to cut and merge footage together as well as add music, intertitles, our BBFC certificate, production logo, and a pre-recorded audio of our protagonist singing on top of the table-stop sequence.  

DIRECTING

We all collectively directed scenes as we felt by staying together and sharing ideas we could all agree with what angles work best and bounce off eachother's ideas. We tried to plan each shot within scenes before filming, and I created a shot list to help with this planning. I directed and filmed the tabletop scene in the dark room, as the lighting and slow reveal of props created an ominous and creepy atmosphere. However, it took a few attempts to film as the shot is one, long continuous shot, and to lighting and props had to be very pecise.

CAMERAWORK

We filmed the majority of our film opening on a Cannon camera, as it had very good quality compared to our phones. However, their were a few times where we filmed on a phone, such as when Sarah is singing in the red lighting, as on the phones we could manipulate the exposure as we filmed, creating the shot we wanted. We had to use many different angles for our production, and one scene I filmed, was the scene where Sarah walks to her car, and the camera tracks her movement and follows her walk. This was to create a disturbing atmophere, as if the audience are invading Sarah's personal space, just as the stalker is. 

ART AND DESIGN

I took charge when planning and designing features of the production such as the production company logo and the film poster. I was able to use my art and graphic design skills to draw a rough sketch of what we wanted our designs to look like, and then using applications such as Photoshop and Procreate with help from Jess, to produce the poster. 

SET DESIGN

I was able to take charge of designing the set for the dark room scene, while we exhanged ideas and spent time playing with the lighting to determine what worked best. We created photos that were supposedly from the stalker's POV, print them out and laminate them so that during the tabletop scene, we could place them in water - to look as if they are being placed in developing solution. Ellie and Jess helped to place and order the props for the table top sequence whilst I organised the positioning of the photos that were taped to the wall, and Millie filmed.

PLANNING: TREATMENT

In our story, we follow the life of a woman called Sarah and the journey her stalker takes in weaving her way into the different aspects of her life whilst continuously taking and producing pictures of her. Sarah is a prominent player in her Lacrosse team and is excelling at her new position in a photography company as an assistant. A mysterious figure continues to appear as Sarah and her share various encounters which develop into meetings and even one on one exchanges. The distinctive features on her hand, such as a ring and a birthmark are constantly shown without her face being revealed to identify the stalker. Slowly Sarah begins to realise an unsettling presence in her life and she becomes warier of her surroundings. Although she doesn’t pin-point a person, she sees a camera flash from outside her bedroom window. Sarah begins to discover various pictures of herself with constructive comments written at the bottom. Finally, towards the end, Sarah is using the developing room and a picture which she has previously received is lying in the tray as the door opens and footsteps are heard. 

Top line and big question:

We decided our top line to be: 'Jealousy transforms into an obsession which leads to an unknown woman producing photos and film of her aquaintance as she stalks her everyday activities.'

Our big question for our opening sequence is: Will she discover her stalker's identity?

 

CASTING: Interveiwing

 PLAN:

• Go into the sixthform centre 
• Ask people questions:
• Why should we cast you?
• What is your best quality?
• Have you had any pervious acting experience?
• Ask boys the questions so that we can say that we were considering different options for the stalker- chose a woman because there wouldn't be the immedate assumption that she was a sexual predator.

We interveiwed potential cast members as part as our casting process to decide what kind of personality the stalker should have. The questions we asked helped us find out who would work best as an actor and bring our vision to life. We decided through interveiwing boys, that we would rather have a female stalker. I was chosen to play the role of the stalker, as I was already in the production team, and a female stalker was part of our USP. I was also cast to be the best friend of of Sarah, Becky, who we decided would be the connection between the stalker and the victim. Although this is not shown in our film-opening, having a female stalker leaves the motive up to interpretation, whereas with a male stalker, it would be assumed that stereotypically, their motivation was of sexual intent.

CONSTRUCTION: REFINEMENTS

 

CONSTRUCTION: REFLECTIONS

 

CONSTRUCTION: CHANGES

 

CONSTRUCTION: EDITS

 

SHOT LIST

 

REFLECTIONS - PHOTOSHOOT

As a prop for our table top sequence in our production, we did a photoshoot of Sarah from the stalkers POV. These were the pictures that the stalker would have taken of Sarah which meant that we experimented with angles and locations that the stalker would have used. In order to not be seen by Sarah whilst taking the pictures, we had her sit on a bench and walk around, and took pictures of her from far away (as to not be seen). To make the pictures more realistic we created shadows and hid behind trees to take the photos, making sure there was part of the picture that had the tree bark in frame, so it would be apparent to the audience that the picture was taken in secret. We wanted the pictures to show Sarah in her everyday life doing everyday things. 

We filmed the stalker taking the pictures too, so that we can edit together the shots of the salker taking the pictures and then show the pictures in turn. However, we did face a few challenges whilst doing this, as on the day of filming the weather wasn't cloudy which made it so we needed to adjust our angles so that the sun didn't reflect on the camera screen and show our faces and shadows whilst filming. We also had to adjust the angles we used through the pictures of Sarah in the window, as she was clearer when the window was open, however the window didn't open fully, and so we had to take this into acount and use a lower angle in order to see her better.

To turn the pictures into props for our tabletop scene, we edited the pictures using a grey scale, as if the stalker used an old camera, making the pictures look moe sinister, then printed them out and laminated a few, so that we could film the stalker developing the pictures in a dark room in a later scene. We had to make sure they were laminated so that the salker could place the pictures in solution without damaging them in order to create a more realistic shot. 

HOTSEATING

  Planning: 

• Stalker- have a voice affect on it and blurr the face- we are having to conceal their identity. Sketchy exchange possibly of money to bribe the stalker to speak about it.
• Ellie- just come in from a run to keep in her character.
• Possibly be in the style of a police interview as if people are being questioned about Sarah's stalking.
• Same quesitons for each- cut from each person's answer.

Questions:

Questions to ask Sarah's friends: Rough outline

• What's your name? Where do you work? 
• Relationship- last time you saw her? Friendship? How was she?
• Have you noticed anything is wrong with her?
• Does she seem happy? Is there anyone you think that is jealous of her?
• Does she have a partner?

Questions to ask Sarah: Rough outline

• Do you know Becky and Alice?
• Do you have a bestfriend?
• Do you know anyone who could be jealous of you?