Mise-en-scène- "When applied to the cinema, mise-en-scène refers to everything that appears before the camera and its arrangement—sets, props, actors, costumes, and lighting.Mise-en-scène also includes the positioning and movement of actors on the set, which is called blocking. These are all the areas overseen by the director, and thus, in French film credits, the director's title is metteur en scène, "putter on scene."
This narrow definition of mise-en-scène is not shared by all critics. For some, it refers to all elements of visual style—that is, both elements on the set and aspects of the camera. For others, such as U.S. film critic Andrew Sarris, it takes on mystical meanings related to the emotional tone of a film." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mise_en_scene

CHARACTERISATION-
In our opening sequence we wanted our main protagonist to represent a modern young adult who had taken recreational drugs. For costume we dressed our main actor, Jessica Hutchinson, in a flowy little party dress with lots of jewellery to help represent her age and portray that she had got dressed up for an expected enjoyable night. The flowy little party dress was great at showing Jess's movement and looked great in slow motion as it shows every twist and turn Jess did. The outfit also helped build on the representation of the character's unstable mind. It also created contrast between the character and location, as the costume chosen was not typical for a woodland exploration. We also put Jess in ripped tights to show that on her drugged exploration she had stumbled, fell, and hurt herself; but she was unaware of this due to being high and tripping out. This helped build characterisation further and also added to the mise-en-scene of the sequence.

For make-up we decided to go with red lipstick and black eye make-up, as we thought this would be most effective when smudged and rubbed about on Jess's face. It helped give a clear visual outline of her moving through insanity during the sequence and helped build characterisation and mise en scene also. We decided to leave Jess's hair down and wavy, but we back combed parts of it and fluffed parts up to also show how the character was taking no care of herself whilst drugged and exploring.

PROPS-
We used very few props in our sequence as we wanted most attention to be focused on the character and the atmosphere. During the sequence we did inject experimental props such as glow sticks when Jess was spinning, to try and create added colour to the shot, but this didnt work as well as we had hoped, as no added colour occured whilst filming or when edited. We used snowdrop flowers in some shots, showing Jess playing with them to show her on a high and happy. We chose these flowers as they were pretty and gave off a positive engergy, which added to Jess's happy high in the sequence and also because they were easy to get hold of, as they were growing arounf parts of the location.

LOCATION

We needed to find a location that would be interesting, fit our genre and allow us to produce great shots and mise en scene. From our film research, we decided that we would film our opening sequence in a forest/wooded area. We decided to film at dusk/twilight time, to give us a variation of lighting, colours and atmosphere. We also decided that we wanted slight darkness to give off a spooky freaky feel to the opening sequence. Firstly, we decided to film in Maxey at Maxey Lakes, as it had a small woods around the edges of it and had a great atmosphere. A couple of problems came up from choosing this location. It took us a while to set up and our actor, Faye, came from Stamford and arrived later than expected. The torches and glow sticks we had bought didn't help produce much light, so we decided just to film on another day.

After our first failed attempt at filming, we discussed and contemplated what we could do different to ensure we successfully filmed second time round. We discussed a change in location, and changed to the local Reservoir in Eye Green. When it came to filming second time round, we again found it incredibly hard to film in the dark. I had done some research the night before second filming on how to film in the dark, but had no success on finding out how to film without buying certain camera accessories. Faye had found it hard to get to Eye any earlier than half 5, so again time had beaten us.

After further discussion on how exactly we were going to get our filming done, we decided on another Actor instead of Faye; Jessica Hutchinson. This was a better decision, as she lived in Eye and found it easy to get to the Lake and film in great time. We also decided to film at an earlier time, so instead we went out to film at half 4 and managed to finish at half 6.
Before we started filming, we took pictures of places around the lake which would fit in with our sequence. This ensured us that we culd remember and log down where abouts we would be filming.

STORY BOARD-
1. 180 degree pan to girl passed out on ground.
2. Close up of girls face, waking up, confused.
3. Quick flash backs,back to face more confused.
4. Big flashback in time showing vital scenes.
5. Beginning of girls evening after taking drugs, skipping through woods.
6. Girl jumping and spinning on hill, show abnormal behaviour and disorientation.
7. Aerial shot above girl spinning, laughing, then close up of her spinning showing her emotions in face and sate of mind.
8. Point of view shot of spinning looking at trees.
9. Point of view running down path, point of view, steadycam, show actions, behaviour.
10. Establishing shot, showing girl in 3 places at once, add to genre.
11. Sat on bridge, paranoia kicks in, heartbeat background sound.
12. Running away, thinksshes being chased, steadycam, tension.
13. Close up on girls face whilst running, scared, show emotion, suspense.
14. Running again, more suspense, tension, girl fall over at end- shown through point of view.
15. Point of view at trees, fade out, in, out, show eyes closing before passing out. Cut back to girls face at beginning, end of flashback.

Research

GENRE-
Firstly, we decided as a group we would make an opening sequence to fit the genre of a horror/thriller. But after more ideas and thoughts being produced, we decided to go along the path of a psychological Thriller/ Indie drama genre as we felt this would allow us to be more experimentive with camera angles and editing techniques.

"A genre is a loose set of criteria for a category of composition; the term is often used to categorize form of art or utterance. Genres are vague categories with no fixed boundaries, they are formed by sets of conventions, and many works cross into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions. The scope of the word "genre" is sometimes confined to art and culture. particularly literature and music, but it has a long history in rhetoric as well. In genre studies the concept of genre is not compared to originality. Rather, all works are recognized as either reflecting on or participating in the conventions of genre." -Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genre


"Drama films-
Dramas are serious, plot-driven presentations, portraying realistic characters, settings, life situations, and stories involving intense character development and interaction. Usually, they are not focused on special-effects, comedy, or action, Dramatic films are probably the largest film genre, with many subsets." - http://www.filmsite.org/genres.html

"Psychological thriller-
A specific sub-genre of the wide-ranging thriller genre. However, this genre often incorporates elements from the mystery and drama genre in addition to the typical traits of the thriller genre. Also, occasionally this genre will border into the also wide-ranging Horror genre.
Generally, thrillers focus on plot over character, and thus emphasize intense, physical action over the character's psyche. Psychological thrillers tend to reverse this formula to a certain degree, emphasizing the characters just as much, if not more so, than the plot.
The suspense created by psychological thrillers often comes from two or more characters preying upon one another's minds, either by playing deceptive games with the other or by merely trying to demolish the other's mental state.
Sometimes the suspense comes from within one solitary character where characters must resolve conflicts with their own minds. Usually, this conflict is an effort to understand something that has happened to them. These conflicts are made more vivid with physical expressions of the conflict in the means of either physical manifestations, or physical torsions of the characters at play."- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_thriller


TYPICAL CONVENTIONS WITHIN OUR CHOSEN GENRE-
COLOURS- Typical colours used and created during editing of a Psychological Thriller usually are used to represent emotion. For example, the colour red usually is used to represent anger, like in the opening sequence to Usual Suspects; the flames and fire giving off have a red a red glow to them, which gives off a sign of danger and anger. Howeverm colours such as yellow and blue are often used also, as they help portray a sense of disorientation and mood in a film.
LIGHTING- Lighting in our chosen genre is used to create shadows and create a certain tone to the film. An example of this is that in the film Gothica, the lighting is very dark and shaddowed, which makes the audience feel uneased and also gives a sence of danger, mystery and suspense to the film.
A GROWING SENSE OF DANGER- In horror films, the use of escalating sounds and pace change build up the intesity in the film, which gives off to the audience a growing sense of danger. This is produced well in the film The Hills Have Eyes.
EXTRAORDINARY EVENTS HAPPEN IN ORDINARY PLACES- The film Paranormal Activity has a prime example of the use of extraordinary events happening in ordinary places, as the setting of the film is a typical house. However wierd thins occur within the house, such as footprints appearing and unexplained movement from around the house, leading the character that playthe owners of the house to complete disarray.
CAMERA MOVEMENT- Camera movement in our chosen genre is used to relate to the intensity of plot. Sudden and fast movement usually show dramatic and out of control movements in the shots produced. Whereas slow movement and steady panning in a shot gives off a sense of danger and suspense to the shot produced.
THEMES BASED AROUND SOCIETY'S FEARS- A typical example of this would be a film like The Grudge where all the characters in the film are killed.
TARGET AUDIENCE- Psychological Thrillers are most commonly popular within the audience range of Young Adults/Adults. This could be due to the fact that most Psychological thrillers include a cast that range between this age, to do with the certification Psychological Thrillers are given and or also to do with the themes involved in a typical phsychological thriller film, i.e Graphic scenes, moderate violence, scenes of a sexual nature.


FILM RESEARCH-
We looked at certain film sequences we felt fitted out genre stlye and storyline. We looked at the camera use, editing, lighting, mise en scene, props, sound and locations shown in the films sequence.


SKINS-
We started by watching episodes of the TV Series Skins, as it is a drama about young adults experiences in life. We watched a stereotype scenario of a young girl taking drugs, with point of view shots of her paranoia and distorted vision. Non-diegetic sound is added at parts of the sequence which adds to the tension and suspense of what will happen next. We noticed during the sequence alot of shots we had already discussed had been used, which made us feel more confident in ourn planning. The lighting used in parts of the clip also help add to the distortion of vision and the young girls messy state of mind. Blue and orange tinges of lighting add to the strangeness and worked well with the use of a blurry fuzzy effect which portrayed the girls point of view.


SHROOMS-
We also looked at scenes from the film Shrooms. This film is about a group of young adults that go camping in a forest and come across "Shrooms". The film shows the effects the shrooms have on the characters and their wellbeing. The genre of the film is somewhat Horror, but certain sequences in the film were very useful and compatible to our ideas. This film also used the same unfocussed and blurred effects which works really well and makes it more interesting and help understand the situation and narrative. It also had a shot very similar to Skins in the forest, showing the trees above in a 360 degree pan. We found this effective, as it could resemble the characters on a high, spinning around or there vision and mind distorting. Another interesting shot was when the camera was put on its side. This was effective and made the sequence feel very strange and distorted again and we felt that this could be included in our opening sequence also.


DONNIE DARKO-
We looked at Donnie Darko, as the genre of this film is a psychological thriller and included very interesting camera angles and shots. Donnie Darko is a film based on a young boy who becomes possessed by a strange friend, "Frank". The lighting throughout the whol film is very dark and it is heavily edited. This makes the film seem more intensifying and wierd. In one scene the camera work is effective and we considered using it in our sequence; the camera does a full 360 degree turn from the characters point of view in slow motion. This adds the the distortion and psychological aura to the film and adds confusion for the audience.

Starting Our Film Opening Sequence

PLANNING-
When first assigned this task, as a group we all decided that the first thing we should do is brainstorm all of our ideas and thoughts on what we wanted our film to be about.

From our brainstorm, we all came up with inspiration of numberous storylines, props, and characters. This was great as beforehand we thought it would be hard to come up with an idea we would all like. We all thought in great detail about the editing techniques and camera angles we could take full advantage of to help suit our chosen genre of a horror/thriller opening sequence.

SYNOPSIS-
From our brainstorm, we formed a basic outline of how our storyline would go;

A young adult girl wakes up in the early hours of the morning in a woods, hair and make-up all messy and rough, looks hungover and down. She has flashbacks whilst waking up, quick shots flash across the screen, then a fast rewind of shots from the evening before cut across the screen. Then we cut to the start of her evening. She takes drugs the night before whilst out at a party, she ends up alone and isolated from everyone else and goes wondering into a near woods. We watch her turn from high, giggly and happy to paranoid, jumpy and scared. We see all of this from the girls perspective and overview of the scenario and make her appear to become vulnerable and unable to control her state of mind. The clip ends with the girl running and panting through the woods looking back behind her as if someone is following her.

When discussing the camera shots that would be used, we came to the idea of using basic standard shots and angles for when the girl is on a high, but then when she becomes paranoid, have the camera at distorted angles and use more close up and point of view shots to emphasis her emotions and terror. We also decided to use these angles to create a wierd/ strange ambience to the opening sequence, which would emphasise our chosen genre.