Location

Video version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NjkN5xTqhA 

Locations

We will be filming the opening scene in an alleyway, we are going to be filming it there because of the atmosphere we want to create. We will be filming this opening scene in the daylight, however we will be blocking out unnecessary light in editing in order to make the opening scene more dull to create an atmosphere of sadness.

There is an alleyway which is local to us which means we can easily go there to film the short scene. We didn’t want to film somewhere it would be busy, therefore we chose this alleyway as its not likely to be as occupied as most of the places we know. However, with the graffiti and the park setting, with the houses you can see that this is also a modern setting.

Most psychological thrillers tend to be set in places that you can relate to, they do this in order to add realism. Stereotypically, an alleyway is a scary place where people lurk who are normally have a bad reputation. Therefore the character in our opening scene is seen down an alleyway so the audience will perceive her as being a bad person, even though later on, you find out that she’s a victim. This is challenging conventions of a usual thriller genre as normally the person dressed in black and in an alley would be the antagonist, not the protagonist. We decided to film here as it shows realism, linking real life to this film, making the audience relate to it better. It's important that the audience can relate to our film as we are using a storyline that is based upon some events from real life. 

We chose this particular alleyway as it has trees and a wall with graffiti on it which means we can shoot from different angles and it looks like the main character is somewhere else. As our opening scene uses flashbacks, this means that we need different locations as she is running away, therefore having a location that includes many different parts to it means we don’t have to go around to different locations in order to film, we have them all in the same place instead, making this a dynamic location. 

For example, this was used as our alleyway:

And just round our corner we had this area of park which we used to film a flashback of her running from the mental institution:

 These two different photos show the versatility of our location and how dynamic it is as it can be seen as one place, and also somewhere completely different.

We think this location is good as the alleyway is dull in colour with lack of leaves due to the time we filmed (winter) which gives it a darker effect, adding to the mise-en-scene.

The lighting is quite dull, even though this was filmed during the day, the lighting being dull makes the audience feel as if this isn’t going to be a happy, setting up the scene.

As our opening scene is filmed during the day, it challenges conventions of psychological thrillers as they would normally be filmed when its getting dark to add the spooky feel to the mise-en-scene.