Cast Profile

Carmella Lowkis:

I made the decision to select Carmella for the role of the victim, the main role in my opening sequence. The reason for my choosing is that Carmella has been actively involved in drama in the past and achieved a grade A* in the subject and therefore would be able to provide a convincing performance. Carmella has also been involved in a number of school productions and independent drama projects which shows that she is dedicated and takes acting seriously and therefore will be easy to work with.

Karen McSweeney

I selected Karen (my mother) for the role of the news reporter (voice) in my opening sequence. I made this decision due to the fact she has a very clear and well-spoken voice which I believe would be fitting for a news reporter. I also selected her for the role of the victim’s mother as she fits into the appropriate age range for the mother of a 15-17 year old and has a very mother-like appearance. I also believe that she will be easy to work with despite her lack of acting experience.  

Finished Props

Overall I was quite pleased with the finished product as on film it looked realistic and was able to play their purpose.

Making of Props: Photo of victim

I required a photo frame containing a picture of the victim for several shots. To make this a found a spare photo frame and printed a picture off of Facebook of the actress who played he  victim in my opening sequence. I then simply cut out the picture to the appropriate size and placed it in the frame.

Making of props: Newspaper

One of my shots required a newspaper article, it played an important part of giving insight into the storyline of the film  as well as setting the mood. I orginally considered making my own newspaper from scratch however I later decided that it would be too time consuming. To make my newspaper article I got a hold of a real newspaper and glued on a picture of a crime scene and by make-believe headline. I had to play around with the font, size and colour of the headline several times in order to make it blend in with the rest of the newspaper (so that it didn't appear fake in shot). I did consider writing the actual article myself but I found that the writing wasn't visable in shot and therefore was unessessary.

Outdoor location shots

This location is where the finale of the opening sequence takes place and the victim is  murdered . This location was fairly easily to film in as there was no one else present here and nothing that would distract the audience's attention way from the main focus (the victim's fear and her death). All that was really required of this location was a surface for which victim to be pushed into, a brick wall could have sufficed however the advantages of using this fence is that it would not be painful for the actress to hit into multiple times (as we had to redo the shot several times to make it look as realitic as possible).  

This location was only used briefly for one shot (that being the point-of-view shot of the murder). Intially this shot was taken in the lane (see picture further down post) however I found that taking multiple shots in that area may have made the sequence fairly dull and repetitive and so I came to the decsion to film else where. This location was chosen specifically becasue I thought that the narrow hedges  creates the illusion of seclusion and claustrophobia which creates a tense atmosphere. 

This location was orginally selected for a wide shot. However after filming the shot several times I came to the conclusion that the location was not fitting for the atmosphere as a domestic setting tends to be pleasant and comforting, contradicting with the fear of the victim.  The setting as contained a lot of distractions.  

The counrty lane was selected for one of the beginning locations and specifically where the character of the victim was introduced. There was both advantages and disadvatages for this setting as the location provided a good space for a chase sequence with little distractions however there was the issue of passers by. Luckily I only had to stop filming once to prevent them from coming into shot and ruining the atmosphere. 

Orginal Production Logo Idea

Orginally I named my production company 'Wilting Rose Productions' and planned on having a animated logo featuring  a rose wilting. I attempted this by finding an images of both a fresh and a wilted rose and one fade into the other, creating the illusion of a wilting rose. However when trying to create this I found that the animation looked very amatuer and also didn't really fit into the atmosphere of the opening sequence, hence I scraped this idea and went back to brainstorming for new company names.

Making of Production logo

By looking at the production logo reseach I did (see previous post) I made the observation that  the majority of the logo are literal representaions of the prodcution company name (e.g Lucky-Rose Films' logo features a four leaf clover, a rose and filming camera). I decided to follow the same approach, my film prodcution company is called Red Mist Productions and by using Vegas Movie Studio (which I am also using for the editing of my film) I managed to create a fuzzy red outline for my text, giving the illusion of red mist which was further emthasised by a red tinted background.