The concept of our film was to have a girl being put into the spotlight but being encompassed by fear. A fear of failure that will eventually relate to her ultimate downfall as she is captured by her own fear of not succeeding. The title of our film was chosen by my team mate, Brooke. She researched different phobias to find one that would best fit into the idea of our film.
For this project, I wrote up the concept of the film and the conventions that we were aiming to include.
Conventions:
Character: Main character will be a nervous girl, constantly displaying a miserable attitude, dancer/or singer, dressed in dark clothing - but not black navy? self doubt and conflict within her to know if she is good enough or not
Villain that lurks in the shadows - Face will be hardly seen, kept hidden til final shots
Close up shots: Can create anxiety and confrontation. Show detail. Example: Sweat on the girls face, body movement
Eerie and suspenseful atmosphere brought by both non diegetic and diegetic sound. Diegetic sound will be most important because it will let the audience hear what the actors hear - examples: heavy breathing of villain behind the scenes and dancer, music that goes with dance - Non-diegetic sound - crash - at the end of sequence before title flashes across the screen to show that something significant to the film has begun
Mirror - Girl stares into the mirror and it reflects how she feels inside and who she really is
Cliffhanger - Person in the mirror is girl herself who later becomes important to the film's plot
Non diegetic music - Light, eerie sound that creates a ballet like sound, string instruments, slow paced
I came up with the plot/storyline of our film and both Brooke and I refined the ideas to create what we believed would be a thrilling film.
Sasha Peters is an aspiring dancer but she seems to be consumed with fear. While onstage, she is an emacculate dancer who has the ability to mask all her fear with dance. Sasha is auditioning for a place at a prestigious dance school overseas. But her fear of failure becomes her worst enemy.
The opening will begin with a sequence of different scenes that will later be important in the film - The sanctuary (stage and audience) backstage, bathroom, pathway - high angles, low angles, panning
Main Character - Sasha 1 - walking toward the sanctuary where her sanctuary will be - long shot, no camera movement
She’ll be on the phone, close up when she says “But what if I fail?”
Cuts to black screen where the title will be presented
When the title fades, we cut to a mid shot of Sasha 1 behind a curtain
Close ups on certain features of her - sweaty hands, face again
Voice heard in background “Sasha Peters? Sasha?”
Camera tracks her feet as she walks on stage
Camera Pans from in front of stage watching as she walks to the centre
Spotlights are placed directly on her and the judges are submersed in darkness
Camera shows Sasha 1’s point of view as she stands on stage looking out to the empty stadium - heavy breathing heard (diegetic)
P.O.V of Sasha 2 backstage as S1 introduces herself
camera pans around curtain and we see S2 backstage
Low angle shot of S1 dancing - Lights and music cuts off and everything goes black
Lights in bathroom flicker on/off - effects edited over the top
Shot 1 - Side on
Shot 2 - Over the shoulder into the mirror as she looks up and sees her own face then fades to black
Bathroom scene mirror girl with jumper looks up and sees herself
cuts off --- credits
Originally, that is how we imagined the sequence to go but changes happened during the planning process and some of this got changed.
My team mate, Brooke van de Water, drew the storyboard and we both took part in piecing it together.
I wrote the script while Brooke was in charge of the shot list.
