For our media opening we set in family home where the babysitter is looking after a young child for the night. We wanted the house to look quite secluded, to make it look more vulnerable and isolated. This technique is used in most films, for instance in Halloween the opening shots of the deattached house make it look isolated, making the audience fear for the characters more. This is emphasized quite a lot in the modern version of When A Stranger Calls, where we see a very big house in the middle of nowhere, a long way from help.
So the house we chose was my house, although it isn't in real fact a secluded house in fact on a road next to plenty of other houses we knew we could get quite a few shots where none of these other houses were visible to make it look secluded. My house was also the most appropiate as it's reasonably close to school so we could easily film in lunch times and after school if neccessary. Also it being one of the group members houses we had easy access to it and we were easily able to adapt my room to fit the context of our film.
This is a shot of the lounge in which Emily, the babysitter is watching tv when she starts hearing noises above her from the little girls room. We see her leave the room to go investigate.
This is a shot of the hallway and stairs that you see in the film. Emily, the babysitter walks from the doors at the bottom to the bottom of the stairs, shouting Rachel...waits for a response, receives none and contiunes up the stairs.
Cast:
In our opening we have 4 main characters and 5 actors.
There is...
- The child being babysat for, Rachel, around the age of 10.
- The older version of Rachel, around the age of 17.
- The babysitter, around the age of 16.
- The older version of Rachels' boyfriend, Chase, age 16.
- The fifth actor is an extra who walks past Rachel and Chase in a corridor, around the same age as them.
- For the young version of Rachel -- Rachel Conlon. ( Picture yet to be uploaded.) Who is 11 years old. Using a young child in a horror opening can be quite a difficulty as many parents wouldn't want their child involved in such. However after a discussion with the parent the young girl wouldn't be around when we filmed or photographed any of the 'horror' and as she only is on screen for around 10 seconds she has little issue in being involved in any gore. We were very lucky in finding a child of the age we were looking for who was able to act to the standards we wanted.
- For the older version of Rachel -- Mary Newton. Who is age 16, but playing the role of 17. We wanted someone who looked as similar to the younger version of Rachel as possible, therefore we need someone with blonde curly hair. We also wanted her to be pretty and have a good figure. If the rest of the film was to be created the film would revolve around this girl's life, we wanted her to be blonde, to create the effect similar to Prom Night. Where the final girl is a pretty blonde who you expect to be a scream queen but her luck saves her through the film. Sterotypically we wanted to place her in the more 'popular' group of teens. Where they attend parties and drink alcohol etc. So that she would be surrounded by mis-behaving teens which would what the film would obtain.
- The babysitter -- Emily Moore. Who is age 16, acting that age also. We wanted to challenge the code and conventions when it came to our babysitter, we wanted to portrary her in the opening two minutes as a final girl, so that when the audience realise she's dead its more of a shock to the audience because they expect the film to be about her. As the opening is only 2 minutes and we want to include a storyline to the begining we didn't have much time for any dialogue of sorts to portray her as a final girl so we based this idea on costume, hair and make up. We wanted a brunette which are stereotypically more likely to survive in horros, and we also wanted to her to be quite plain and simple so little makeup was used and her outfit is quite bland with blue and denim. We also covered a large amount of her body so that she doesn't appear as revealing anything. As this is meant to be when Rachel is younger we based the babysitter around the late 1990's/ early 2000's. So the clothes she's seen in place her in a later time period so the transition of older Rachel and her costume is more noticable. We based her more on When A Stranger Calls, 2006, main actress.
- The boyfriend, Chase -- Tom Bearpark. Age 16 acting age 17. We wanted quite a 'hench' good looking boy for this role. To create the good looking people together idea that you come across in most horror films like Prom Night.
- And finally the extra-- Holly Rowe. We needed someone to walk past the couple on the corridor to make it look more like a school, you only see the back of their head.
Props:
In our film we used a range of props such as...
- Toys
- Childrens books - Hansel & Gretel - a known scary children's tale.
- General childish things to make the room look like a 10 year olds.
- Fake Blood - this was something necessary for the photos of the dead babysitter... we did two attempts of this using recipies found on the internet one resource we used was.... http://www.halloween-website.com/fake_blood.htm from this we created our own fake blood and used it to show the babysitter as dead. We made several mixes and then chose the most realistic. We found our final version was realistic however if looked closely at it looked quite blotchy, and lumpy however we were going for the colour as these photos will only be shown as quick flashes so the audience wont get much of a close look at them.
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