As a lot of our film will be filmed inside Laura's house, our health and safety considerations here are quite small. However on the shots filmed elsewhere, we will have to take health and safety into account.
College
Hazards:
uneven surfaces - potential to fall/trip
other students - potential to bump into others/be in the way
equipment - could cause strain/injury transporting it around the college
We hope to eliminate these hazards by being mindful of where we set up our equipment. This will mean being out of the way of college exits, and hopefully away from large groups of students. We will also be sensible with the amount of equipment we need, and limit the amount we carry if necessary to avoid injury.
Outside Scenes Hazards:
traffic - risk of being knocked down
uneven surfaces - potential to trip/fall
equipment obscuring pedestrian access
These hazards could be more problematic to eliminate completely, as obviously we cannot control the traffic, but we hope to film in quiet areas where there is not much traffic. We also need to be mindful of where we set up our equipment as we could block access to the pavement, creating problems for the safety of others.
Car Scene Hazards:
getting distracted while driving - potentially dangerous for everyone in the car
not wearing a seatbelt - danger for this person
pedestrians/other vehicles - people walking around the car could cause distraction/might not be seen if the driver is distracted
crashing - risk of serious injury
These are more serious hazards that we need to consider. To help decrease the risk of these hazards, we will need to be very careful about our filming in the car. We will put our safety first when filming, ensuring that we take into account all of the above hazards and produce our film in the correct manner.
Soundtrack We want to incorporate a soundtrack into our short film, so we looked around various websites to find one that we thought would fit in with the mood that we are trying to create. This website proved to be most useful, providing us with a couple of possible soundtracks that we could use.
This song is called Manner of Travelling by Hot Fiction. We came across this song whilst browsing for possible soundtrack ideas for our film, and liked the simplicity of it and the emotions that it evokes. We thought it would work really well with the ideas we have had for our short film, and thought that it could work particularly well in our flashback scenes.
This song is called Heartbeat and conveys similar emotions to the first one. However, we prefer Manner of Travelling, and have decided to use that as the soundtrack for our film.
Foley Sound We have discussed the idea of using Foley sounds in our short film, and have decided that they may be necessary in a couple of places. For example we want sounds of cupboards closing in a couple of our shots, which may need to be added in afterwards to achieve the effects that we want.
Location Issues Most of our shots will be filmed indoors, and therefore sound issues will probably not be too much of a problem. However, we will be filming outside in some cases and here sound may be more problematic. For example, we want to film a scene at college where there will be other people around, so we will have to try and keep our location as secure and quiet as possible, or alternatively we will have to be prepared to add in these sounds in post-production. We are also filming a scene where Sam and Amy walk down a road together, so obviously the sounds of traffic could be a potential problem here. We will have to get around this by finding a relatively quiet road, or if this is not possible then editing this shot slightly so that we see the characters walking somewhere else.
We have discussed ideas about our film idea and are focusing on the theme of Domestic Violence. We talked about going for teenage domestic violence rather than in adults as it will be harder for us to act as adults rather than acting our own age.
We have discussed about the story and plot and are coming up with a lot of ideas. We've had the idea of a possessive girlfriend, who is constantly in touch with her boyfriend. She texts him, he doesn't reply then she rings him repeatedly. The audience then sympathises with her as we think he is the stereotypical man and she is just the clingy girlfriend.
Our film will comply to a hybridity of social realist, romance (all for the wrong reasons). We give the audience the impression of a romance and a slight bit of Thriller as Sam is the protagonist and Amy is the antagonist. We will fool the audience into thinking it is a romance by initially conforming to Todorov's narrative. The equilibrium is where he is at the pub with his friends, then the disruption is when she calls him and appears to spoil his evening. However, we soon find out it does not conform to this narrative through the way it is non-linear and there is no resolution. The switch in narrative signifies a switch in genre, from romance to conventions of thriller.
Or film will contain a vast representation of social groups including gender and those traditional representations as well as the issues surrounding abuse. We feel that representing these groups through costume and make up as well as props will allow our audience to feel emotion for our characters and to bring awareness of how domestic abuse isn't as simple as people first think.
Other scene ideas
Flashback scenes with 'trigger' props
Eating dinner alone at home - flashback to their first date
Flashback too before the violence
Flashback to Sam meeting a girl outside college, seeing Laura talk to him and Amy getting jealous. This begins Amy's descent into abuse as she become possesive over Sam.
Phone conversation - "Who are you with?"
Following him home in the car - he hears a radio broadcast about domestic abuse
A scene with Sam looking at a note from his mum, we begin to see the possesiveness of the characters.
We have a couple of different ideas for the ending.
One involves him on the phone to a help line which she overhears/sees. We would not elaborate on an ending here to keep the audience guessing what is going to happen.
She confronts him one last time resulting in disastrous consequences - final shot of Sam lying on the floor - again, keeps the audience wondering what has happened.
He kills himself
He stands up for himself and she realises the consequences of her actions.
Another idea that we had that would make the plot complex is that the whole story up until the end is a flashback. We have the shot where he rings a helpline, then Amy comes in from behind. He hears her, then he hangs up the phone and the beep from the dial turns into the beep of someones heart in a hospital. We then cut to a shot, in present time where Sam is in a hospital bed. The audience are left questioning what happened, and contemplating the severity of domestic abuse.
