Costume

I decided to choose this type of pyjamas for the character Legjenda. It gives her a youthful look nothing too smart or grownup. The sweet, child-like image and colour pink connnote her innocence and vulnerability. Also this type of costume would be more readily identified with by our target audience as we are aiming primarily at the 16-24s age group.

"Logo"

Logo:



After discussing whether it would be beneficial to have a logo which represented our initials as a group, we thought of the logo L.I.D. as in addition, this was a play on words. However after deciding that it was too ordinary for our brand identity, we sought a more unique, sophisticated logo which would make our film stand out as a professionally created product.

We decided on the words Liquid Space as it not only linked iconographically to our film via the moon, the image also conformed to the conventions of the supernatural thriller genre and therefore would be effective in setting the tone of the film.

Before creating our final draft, we researched different high production value institutional logos such as 20th Century Fox and Pixar in order to understand how to produce one to a professional standard. logos The indication we gained from viewing a series of prestigious logos was that they all conformed to the concept type of films and genre each institution was recognised for producing.

We designed our logo to be based within outer space with the moon in the background and the letters Liquid Space placed over it at an oblique angle to suggest something that would be out of the ordinary. Whilst creating the logo, we decided to deploy a Bubble font script and produced the actual logo on Photoshop.

To further improve our logo, we intend to produce a moving image using the program Final Cut to feature as part of the presentation of our logo at the beginning of the film.

Moving Image Logo with Sound:

(see appendix )

When establishing the supernatural thriller theme, we thought about conveying the genre of the supernatural within our logo. As seen in this clip, we composed a soundtrack that enhanced the supernatural atmosphere. We created this track in the programme Garageband and made the score sound eerie and unnerving in order to create an atmosphere of suspense and drama which also goes with the conventions of having a supernatural thriller. I tried to use music that would evoke a sense of unease, so it would add to the suspense of Beyond Reflection. I think this illustrates the extent to which music plays an important part in reinforcing the genre.

I also designed the logo image to be in space with the words Liquid Space, a name on which we decided as it stood out and was unique. In terms of the font we used Bubble. In creating the logo I initially encountered problems with using the program Live Type because it didn't have the various fonts I wanted to deploy in our logo. Consequently, I opted to use the program Flash, which enabled us to create our logo the way we wanted.

Script

Beyond Reflection


EXT Outside the house – Night

LS-Establishing shot of Legjenda walking through the gates towards the door it is very dark and quite all you can hear are her shoes. She is cold and tired, walking slowly.

Cut to

Close up of the full moon

INT Inside Legjenda’s bathroom

CU- Legjenda brushing her teeth side on, her reflection shows in the mirror, the bathroom light is on. She is wearing her pyjamas.

Cut to

Point of view shot- Wrist watch showing midnight. Still hearing her brushing her teeth.

Cut to

MS- Legjenda rinsing her mouth as she goes down the reflection stays in the mirror. Still hearing the water running.

Tracking- Legjenda leaving the bathroom and walking up the stairs into the corridor going to open her bedroom door, no lights are on.

Match on action

Legjenda opening the door into her room only the lamp is on.

Panning

She walks to her bed and lies down putting the duvet over her closing her eyes. Pause for a few seconds on her face.

Quick zoom out

Tracking out the room, into the corridor, downstairs and into the bathroom where the light is still on.

MS- Mirror where the reflection of the girl is still there. The reflection starts coming out the mirror, into the camera.

Black out

MS- Reflection walking out of the camera

Panning to the stairs

Cut

LS- High angle first landing of the reflection walking up the stairs past the camera.

Cut

LS- Top of the stairs of reflection into the corridor.

Cut

LS- Next to the front door of reflection going into Legjenda’s bedroom stopping at the door.

Quick Cut

To legjenda’s face, she opens her eyes and looks around, the lamp is still on.

Swift shift to the left

Quick zoom into the lamp

Fade in

The full moon

Location

Planning of Location:

The is the location that we used
to record our exterior shots.
We chose this location because
it is a stereotypical suburban
setting of modern built
apartment flats and was quiet
during the day to enable us to
be time efficient in filming and,
importantly, met our need that
it would be quiet so the audience
would distinctly hear the character
Legjenda's solitary footsteps,
which would contribute to
creating a mysterious atmosphere.

Pitch

Titles and Promotion:
We decided to call our supernatural thriller opening Beyond Reflection because the concept is strongly connected to the film's theme and action. Our one-line sales pitch is: It's a normal wind-down evening until the moon comes out and her reflection comes alive and our tagline is Who can you tell when your own reflection is out to get you. This tagline reinforces the genre and gives a hint of what the film could be about.

Brief Synopsis:
The narrative is based on the premise that at midnight, when it is a full moon, if someone looks in the mirror, their reflection comes alive and tries to replace them, trapping them in turn in the mirror.

Location:
We chose to film our sequence in Legjenda's house as it was convenient and was suitable to create a sense of realism. Additionally, the lighting was suitable for creating the right atmosphere and, in the case of the bedroom lamp, suitable for using in creating the special effect in the dissolve shot to an image of the moon. For the exterior shots, the area was not too noisy and would not therefore be likely to interfere with or delay our filming. Significantly, we will be filming at night, in keeping with the conventions of the supernatural thriller genre and adding to the mood of fear and horror.

Target Audience:
We have chosen to aim this at 15 to 24 years olds as statistics show they go to the cinema more often and are also most likely to watch a supernatural thriller, which is why we have given it a rating of 15.

Fuller Outline of the Opening Sequence:
We start off seeing the the character walking home at night, when she gets home, she's getting ready for bed; brushing her teeth whilst looking in the mirror, there is then a cut to her watch which shows it's midnight, using an eye-line match, when she goes down to rinse out her mouth the reflection remains in the mirror, this is unnoticed by the character, by doing this it creates dramatic irony and reinforces the genre. The character is followed as she goes to bed upstairs, suddenly the camera quickly zooms out, goes back down the stairs, to the bathroom mirror. We the see the reflection coming out the mirror, appearing as if it had walked through the camera, this involves the audience and puts them in the action. The reflection then goes back upstairs into her room. As the reflection opens the door the character opens her eyes and we go from close up from and aerial shot to a quick shift zooming into the lamp besides her, which then fades into the moon. There are cuts to the full moon throughout the extract signifying it's importance.

Influences:
We were inspired by a range of supernatural thriller films. In particular, we were fascinated by the film Mirrors, which uses mirrors to inflict pain onto people. In addition, a scene from The Ring 2, where the little boy is looking in the mirror, taking photographs, which only he can see the other female character in was a source of stimulating ideas. Both these films exploit the conventions of the supernatural thriller genre and by using ideas these two films in particular, we were able to produce our own ideas and interpretations which would be practical for us in making our film.

Filming

Day One:

On the first day of filming we had only two hours to film before we had to get back to school for our next lessons, so we had to work quickly. By the time we had gotten the filming equipment, caught the bus to Legjenda's house and Legjenda got into her costume, half an hour had gone.

Once we got there, we realised the house wasn't dark enough to make it look like it was night, but that problem was solved quickly by drawing the curtains and we started to film the bathroom scenes. In practice it proved to be difficult to film the mirror scene inside the bathroom without the camera being seen, so we decided to place the camera at the door of the bathroom, where we could still get a good shot of the mirror and not see the camera in the reflection.

After getting some good shots, we moved on to the next scenes. We did the match-on-action stairs scenes, which were easy to shoot and quickly finished. Next, we shot the scene where Legjenda goes into the bedroom, using a match-on-action shot. The fact that the door creaks loudly was an advantage as it helped add to the eerie, supernatural feel and the match-on-action technique worked well after a few attempts. Our work was curtailed at that point as it was time to get back to school and filming was over for a while.

Day Two:

We only had a few more scenes to shoot and again only had a few hours to shoot them in. We shot the point of view shot a couple of times before we achieved it successfully at a steady pace and angle. The stairs conveniently creaked as I walked down them, which added effectively to the build up of tension.

Our final scene, where Legjenda's reflection comes out of the mirror and goes up the stairs to Legjenda's room, took us a while to film as we had to make it look continuous. The final shot, where we had to zoom into Legjenda's face and then shift swiftly to the lamp, was difficult as the zooming and shifting was difficult to synchronise. It took us about ten tries before we finally did it right.

The only scenes left for us to film were the exterior shots which we had to wait for darkness to film, and the shots of the moon. That night Legjenda shot the exterior shots of her walking into the estate.

Day Three:

After uploading the footage onto the Macs, it became apparent that we needed more scenes of Legjenda walking into the house and sitting down, instead of jumping straight from the outside scenes into the bathroom shots. Accordingly, Legjenda and I went back to her house that night and shot the extra scenes, without any difficulty and using the night-time ambiance to our advantage.

Editing

Day 1:
We finally finished filming so were ready to upload our two minute film onto the Mac computer. A key task was to mark the INS and OUTS of the vital parts of the shots. This had to be done accurately for it to be continuous and have a sense of verisimilitude. This was our rough draft so we could identify the usable footage. This didn't take very long because, as a result of the time we invested in the planning process, we didn't make many mistakes during filming.