Props and Clothing

In my teaser trailer, I will wear this dress when portraying Shelly. It is a dress typical of a teenage girl, showing that Shelly wishes to be accepted as normal, and that she is always striving to be the same as everyone else (in a desperate attempt to reject her insanity). 

My trailer does not require any props (apart from the doll), seeing as eye contact between Shelly and Constance is the main focus. I do need to find some string or rope for the hanging scene though.

Pitch PowerPoint

Note: On this slide it says “a single scene that is intercut with dialogue, music and intertitles” when in fact it should say “two scenes intercut with dialogue, music and intertitles”.

Dutch Tilts and Security Camera Shots

In my teaser trailer, I am going to use Dutch tilts to create a feeling of disorder.

Dutch tilts are often used to depict the psychological discomfort in the subject being filmed. This shot is achieved by tilting the camera to the side, and the majority of Dutch angles are static shots (I have challenged this by including a Dutch tilt that zooms in). Dutch tilts can also add a feeling of creativity to a piece and make the whole aesthetic of a shot more eye-catching. 

I am also going to apply security camera shots to my work.

Security camera shots are a speciality form of high-angle shots, taken from the corner of a room. In my teaser trailer, I am going to use security camera shots to show that an all-powerful force is watching Shelly and Constance. The unknown and dominant being is Shelly’s insanity, as this is the real villain/problem in my storyline, not the doll. These shots will also help to establish where my main characters are sitting (180 degree rule).

ROUGH Storyboard

Here is a rough “storyboard”. This is for my own personal use, so that I can get a good impression of how my idea works with music and get a clear outline of the timing.

Tagline

“She’ll break you”

I feel this is a good tagline, as it is both a reference to Shelly's brutal demise (at the hands of Constance) and also a play on the easily breakable nature of dolls. As well as this, the direct threat - “She will break you” - presents a challenge to the audience, which would hopefully, in the real world, result in lots of box office sales from people interested in testing their nerve.

Note: Constance is the name of the doll.

Binary Oppositions

Today we talked about dominant and oppositional ideologies, and created a chart of binary oppositions.

Shelly is a mentally ill girl left in a bad situation by the end of my film, and therefore she fits in with the dominant way of thinking, which states that mentally challenged/disabled people are unworthy of a happy life/acceptance. However, as Shelly is the main character, my movie also crosses over into oppositional territory, as it’s not like I’m ignoring the issue all together, or pretending that it doesn’t exist.

Dominant: Men, white, thin, healthy, able, sane, working

Oppositional: Women, black, fat, sick, disabled, insane, not working

Ideology

Ideology is often referred to as an unconscious set of values or beliefs that a group, society or individual hold to be true or important, and provide a particular view of the world.

The values and beliefs perpetuated by the majority within a society may be described as dominant ideologies. Dominant social institutions include the BBC (who stand for traditional British values and fairness), schools (who instil respect and good behaviour) and the NHS. Some dominant ideologies may be hidden by the “common sense” view or the “naturalised” view. An example of this would be the view that all girls are “naturally” meek and feminine.

Such a consensus view of society is achieved with the consent of the majority of a particular society as a whole, and this has been termed by Antonio Gramsci as hegemony (the way one belief system comes to dominate society).