Budget

Here is the estimate of the overall cost of our project. Some of these items will be brought by the actors or found on the location, however we need to have understanding of the financial side.

Props: 1 litre of fake blood (£28.99) + silver tape (£6.99) + a dinning chair (£97.57) + various vegetables and spices (about £10) 

Total on props: £143.55

Costumes: White apron (£3.23) + Red dress(£185) + Black trousers (£23) + White shirt (£19.49) + Black shoes (£44)

 

                                                               

Total on costumes: £274.72

Total spendings: £418.27

Costume

In our opening scene, the woman will wear a red evening dress and a white apron. The combination of colours connotes her anger and cruelty. She doesn't have shoes since she is cooking at home. Bare feet also imply her mental instability.

The man is dressed in a white shirt, black trousers and black office shoes. This outfit suggests that they are a middle class family. Blood will be very noticeable on a white shirt, making the man's appearance dramatic.

Props

Fortunately, our sequence doesn't require many props. Most of them will be found on the location, but there are several that we will have to purchase or borrow in advance.

A knife, a chopping board, vegetables, a saucepan, cutlery - these objects are already present in the kitchens of both our locations. We will need to ask for permission of the houses' owners to use them in filming.

Radio - one of my friends in the boarding house owns a records player that would fit in perfectly. I will have to borrow it from him the day before the shoot.

Fake blood, silver tape, cooking ingredients, a bottle of red wine, a lemon and a chair - We will buy these items online or in one of Guildford stores. We don't have the facilities and time to make the fake blood ourselves, neither are we confident if it will turn out to be washable. We cannot risk the owner's property, so we will need our own chair that we can freely spoil with fake blood. Cooking ingredients  have different appearances and therefore different effects on the viewers, so we will buy the required and arrange a combination of foods and spices to get the desired image.

Similar Media Products

This blog will cover the media products that are similar to our project in terms of their characters, scenes or story lines. There weren't any productions that inspired ours from the beginning, however there are multiple movies and series with a woman in role of the main antagonist.

1) Gone Girl (2014)
































Like in our thriller, its plot revolves around a family couple whose relationship deteriorates. Their hate reaches the point where Amy attempts to set her husband up for her murder. Its biggest similarity with our thriller is the subversion of a female character; she is the one who victimises her husband, just as in our opening scene. Like our character of the wife, Amy is brutal and mentally unstable. She also was pushed around for the most of her life; first by her parents, then by the unfaithful husband. Most of its scenes have low key lighting building the eerie mise-en-scene. We want our opening sequence to achieve similar visual effect.


2) The Shining  (1980)

































Both The Shining and our thriller are about a family member who ends up trying to kill his/her partner. Although Jack Torrance was also influenced by the supernatural forces, it is clear that the biggest reasons for turning into a psycho were inside Jack himself; such as stress, childhood problems and family quarrels. The husband in our story appears to be a pleasant man in the beginning, but became abusive through the plot's development. So is the wife, sweet and innocent at first, ends up torturing and killing a man. Both movies show how mental distress pushes people to committing inhuman actions.


3) Safe Haven (2013)

The movie is about a man who follows his beloved wife after her attempt to escape their abusive marriage. It shows how controversial can be the abuser's feelings and behaviour towards his victim. Like our thriller, the film depicts the struggle that goes on inside the abuser, explaining some reasons for his behaviour and allowing the audience to feel empathy.


5) Cherry Wine (Hozier music video, 2014)

Hozier's song and its music video show the world of a victim of abuse before and after the domestic violence. It focuses on how difficult it is for the victim to see themselves as a victim, when they are in love with their abuser, and how much distress this inner resistance creates.


6) Dexter (Oct 2006 - Sept 2013)

The series captures the cycle of domestic violence by depicting a relationship between the characters Paul and Rita Bennet. It presents three stages of abuse: honeymooning, tension building and battering. The project successfully shows how hard it is to break the cycle. It required Dexter to get involved and set Paul up for a crime to end the abuse.

How to make fake blood

One of our main characters was stabbed and bleeds severely during the opening scene. As he crawls to the door or is dragged around by the woman, he leaves a bloody path on the floor and multiple stains on the nearby objects. So we need to learn how to make washable, realistically looking blood and how to achieve the visual effect of heavy bleeding. Here is a suitable recipe:

Ingredients

1. Washable red tempera paint
2. Washable red tempera paint
3. Washable brown tempera paint (optional)
4. Water

Instructions

1. Pour as much paint into the container that you think you will need
2. Add about 1/4 as much water as the red paint and mix. If it is too runny it will look unrealistic.
3.Slowly add blue and/or brown paint a little bit at a time and mix
4. As soon as it turned dark enough you're finished

For our scene we will need a combination of dark and bright red, since the man is covered in both fresh and dried up blood, which are different in colour.

The recipe is taken from an article on eBay web-site: "The Only 3 Fake Blood Recipes You'll Ever Need"

This video from Rocketjump Filmschool Youtube channel tells the history of the use of fake blood and shows the process of making it in more detail.

Storyboard

It took our group four class meetings to finish the storyboard. Harriet was the artist, Dora, Aidan and I were working on the arrangements and descriptions of the shots. Sometimes Harriet took the pages away to finish drawings at home. We ended up with twenty three images. Since the action of the sequence is quite simple, this number of shots should cover the opening scene. We were saving the cuts to make each transition effective and keep the slow pace. It doesn't seem to interfere with continuity of the shots or make the cuts visually unpleasant.

The next step is to assemble them onto a single board and pitch our shots arrangement to Mike and Matt. We will change the board according to the feedback, or move on to finish the location, props and cast organisation.

Casting

We had to choose two sets of actors, our first choice and the backup cast. They had to look of the same age and have similar proportions so it wouldn't be difficult for the woman to drag her husband and place him in a chair. For the woman's role we picked Bentham, an energetic psychology teacher who is good at acting and will be able to perform the transformation from an innocent looking wife into a murderer realistically. The husband can be played by Chris, an experienced Theatre Studies teacher who can show through facial expressions the pain and fear felt by his character.

Our back-up is Claire, head of our sociology department, and Dan who teaches music technology. Both of them are good actors and will be a perfect replacement should someone from the first pair refuse.

If we were able to access stars of the industry, we would offer the parts to Rosamund Pike and Jason Clarke. Rosamund played similar characters before, such as Amy Dunne in "Gone Girl" and Maggie Greer in "Surrogates". Jason showed that he can play both antagonists (e.g. White House Down), good guys (e.g. Everest) and depressive characters who commit crimes out of desperation (e.g. The Great Gatsby). He is therefore perfect for a role of a man who, due to the circumstances and his ego, turns from a loving husband to an abusive brute.

What is storyboarding

"Story board is a sequence of pictures created by a production illustrator to communicate the desired general visual appearance on camera of a scene or movie" - IMDb Terminology Glossary

Although it seems old fashioned, most of the professional storyboards are still made by hand. They visualize the information given by shot lists and create a clearer picture of the final product. It is necessary for construction of the set and helps the filming crew to prepare in advance of the shooting.

Most commonly storyboards are made in pen or pencil. Photographs and digital images are also used. It can also be a collection of shots filmed on the location before it is set up.

Images are followed by descriptions from the shot lists that they were drawn on. They have to include the following: shot number, location, action, shot (the angle and scale)/movement (it can be also presented by direction arrows drawn on the picture), sound, lighting, transition and duration.

Jaws (1975) 

Director: Steven Spielberg

Storyboard Artist: Joe Alves

The story-boarding process was developed at the Walt Disney studio during the early 1930s. It became popular in live-action film production during the early 1940s. Implemented by filmmakers and television commercialists, storyboards created an advantage of visualizing sections of the potential products and finding problems before they occur. The technique was then adapted to business and used to propose projects and other motions intended to convince or compel action.

Walt Disney pitching Pinocchio

Visualizing data in business presentations 

The list of famous storyboard artists includes:

Saul Bass (Psycho, 1960) 

Dean Tavoularis (Apocalypse Now, 1979)

J. Todd Anderson (No Country for Old Men, 2007)

Minuet Meetings

Apart from having discussions during lessons, our group held several meetings outside the class times. Their purpose was to sort out disagreements and evaluate individual ideas. Because of the tight schedules it wasn't always possible to gather all the group members, so often the meetings were between two or three people. The results were sent to the rest by Facebook messages.

Location

Today we had to confirm the location for our shoot. Presently we have two places where we were given permission to go: the flat of a Media teacher Adam or Harriet Goodall's home. We will only use two rooms of a house; the kitchen and the dinning room.

One of the issues we can foresee straight away is the use of fake blood. Therefore we will have to avoid or remove all the materials that can get permanently stained with it; such as carpets, fabrics etc. We will also have to shoot the dragging scene quickly and clean up straight afterwards. Since the bloody path that the man will leave behind him can leave marks on the floor, even if it's made of supposedly unchangeable materials such as plastic, stone or marble.

We are planning to spend about six hours on the location, giving us two hours for setting up and three to four hours for filming. However, we will get there early to ensure that we will start filming as soon as it turns dark and have enough time to catch up if something goes wrong. Both our locations are very close. Because Adam is  also a housemaster, his flat is in the Peaslake boarding house. Harriet's house is in 20 minutes drive from the school campus. We will take a school minibus to go there.

We chose these locations because they are nearby and are owned by the people we know. It was easy to get the permissions and minimal time will be spent on transport and set up.

Harriet's kitchen:

Adam's kitchen:

Story Board in Progress

Over the last week our group was working on  the storyboard for the opening scene. Because Harriet Goodall is the most artistic member of our group we entrusted her with the task of drawing the shots, while the rest had to write their descriptions.

In four days we finished the shot directions and Harriet made 20 basic drawings. She then started to develop them by adding more details and coloring the important features.

The deadline for storyboards is on 8th of December, that gives us a lot of time to think of better angle and for Harriet to make the images look even better.

Mood Board

On 25th of December we were given a personal task to create a mood board for our thriller. Its images have to reflect on the topics and atmosphere of the story. We could arrange the board either digitally using an editing software such as Photoshop, or by making a collage with cut out and glued in  pictures. I decided to go for the second variant.

The center of attention on my board is the shadow of a man strangling a woman, since our story is mostly about domestic violence. On the left and right sides there are portraits of an angry man and a woman with bruises on her face, these are our main characters. The tearing shadow of a boy shows the woman's inability to have children, which caused the beginning of their quarrels. The image of a bottle with handcuffs locked around it suggests that the man may also have a drinking problem that worsens his behavior. Because the opening scene is taking place inside a kitchen with the woman preparing a dinner, I included images related to cooking such as spoons with spices hanging from the top, a dirty blender and a chopping board with a knife ran into it. The huge size and poor conditions of the knife imply the brutality of the plot. The taped hands and a splash of blood are the signs of torture that the woman inflicts on the man.The dominating colour of the board is red, which is symbolic for pain and violence, imposed towards both the woman and the man. The background's black colour connotes the depression that the characters went through.

Final Outline

The whole movie is about a family who degraded because of the husband's abusive behavior. After their marriage the couple found out that they can't have children, because of the woman's condition. It significantly affected their relationship. Because of her inability and several external reasons the man started to behave aggressively. Domestic violence became frequent. Unable to find a way out the woman's mental health was getting worse. After a particularly bad brawl, she decided to stab the man in his sleep, tie him up and take revenge for all the inflicted suffering and ruining of her life. We were partly inspired by Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" based on Stephen King's novel.

Here is the step outline of our opening scene. A woman is listening to music and cuts vegetables in a kitchen. As she moves around to take ingredients or tools we see a blurry figure or a shadow in the background, so the audience assumes that this figure is the antagonist and the lady is in danger. When she continues to cook, the viewer notices bruises and cuts on the side of her face, connoting that she was a victim of abuse. Suddenly she hears a noise in the dinning hall and takes a knife as if to protect herself. Following the noise she finds her husband, covered in blood with his legs taped, who tries to open the door. At that point the roles of a victim and a villain swap, the woman grabs him by the legs and pulls back to the dinning room. As she does it the audience can see the blood path that he left crawling to the door. She places him back in a chair and wraps his hands to the armrests with a tape. After a pause she goes back to the kitchen and continues cooking. The man attempts to loosen the ties, she hears it, starts to chop faster to emphasise the sound and turns around with a knife with a knife in her hand. Blackout.