Production

Mise-en-scene


The mise-en-scene we have chosen for our film, was my house. I live in Wimbledon, which is a really quiet are where not a lot happens, meaning there wouldn't be many distractions when we wanted to work and we most likely wouldn't have any problems with shooting there. The fact that my are is so quiet, makes the place a bit eerie, especially when it starts getting dark, which is when we were planning on starting to film in the first place. In the original movie, Scream, the opening sequence was also shot in a quiet place with nobody around, as the house there was quite secluded.

Shooting in my area allowed for some interesting ideas, as the place in which I live is quite modern but everything is made out of reddish-brown brick, giving it a more antique-y feel. This allows for the movie to have a more serious tone, as the setting looks more professional and well thought out. For example, the place in which the killer is hiding at the beginning of the film is a bin house, which is a quite creepy looking place as it's mainly covered by shadow and with very little lighting. This gave us an edge as it proved to be a perfect location that went great with our idea.

Costume & props


For our costumes and props, we had a lot of thinking to do. We wanted to make the film a modern version of Scream, so we knew that the costume would have to be quite current (the kind of clothes teenagers and people in their early 20s, which is the main target audience, would most likely wear).

With the victim, we settled for a pair of trousers and a jumper - quite casual as she's just sitting around at home and watching TV. However with the killer, we decided to have someone wearing tracksuit pants and a hoodie, somewhat representing today's youth and gangsters.

For the props, we decided to use a plain white mask, as we decided that it will have the most effect, as it leaves quite a lot to the audiences' imagination. For the knife, we had to go out and buy a plastic one, as we weren't allowed to use a real one, for reasons such as it wouldn't be safe. We also knew that we would be needing blood in our film, and as we were in the costume shop where we bought the mast and knife, we considered buying fake blood, but later we settled on trying to just make some ourselves, which worked out really well for us as the blood looked very realistic.


Technical aspects - lighting and sound

When we started filming our project, there were many thing which we had to consider. The main things we had to focus on in terms of our genre, were lighting and sound, as those were some of the key things to making a good horror film. Since the are in which I live is quite quiet and generally quite dimly lit, this also seemed to work greatly in our favour. What we had planned in the beginning, was just to shoot the area as it is, and then add special sound effects in the editing if needed. However, as we started shooting and then watched the film back, we found that the sounds we caught on camera were already perfect for what we wanted to do - for example, the rustling of leaves in the establishing shot, or a creepily red light above the main door to the victims house. Those were some things we were lucky enough to find by accident, though the whole process of trying to find the right position for good light and sound (eg, waiting till cars go past so there wouldn't be any extra noise) was carefully thought out.


Cinematography


I was the camera woman in this production and I had to think of how to shoot all the scenes, where the camera would look best and how I should proceed from one scene to the other. I also had to think about whether what we shot was good enough, or if it needed re-shooting. I had to think about not using the same shot for ever scene and think about variety in general. I also had to make sure to count every one in and start and stop filming around five seconds after each scene was done, in order to avoid any dialogue or movement being cut off by the camera starting or stopping.