Mise-en-scène

As the thought slowly dawned upon us that we actually have to take steps in order to ensure our film makes it out of development hell and onto the big silver media-studies screen, we began to focus on exactly what we would need in order for our film to become a real product.

The first thing that we thought could be a real problem for us was our location. Although when writing the original treatment I envisioned using my Aunt's garden as a potential filming point, I had no real guarantee that this would be possible. Realising that we would most likely have to film on weekends due to our massively important and busy social lives ("why would you lie on the blog?") this also meant that we would not be able to film in and around an empty house as we hoped for.

Next up was cost, which wasn't really a major issue as neither of us minded paying a few quid to buy props and costumes and other buzzwords we can embolden for emphasis.

Most of the props and costumes we required were simple things we had lying around our houses (e.g. shoe boxes, notepads, skateboards...) but one particular thing we had completely overlooked was compost, which we would need for the make-shift grave. This also made me worry about my Aunt's reaction should we tip a large bag of compost all over her lovely garden in the name of media.


With our initial idea as well, we were quite adamant that we wanted a clear day during our first scene, and a windy wet night for our next. One spectacular realisation later, we concluded that we absolutely could not depend upon the weather being reliable for our filming schedule, and decided to come up with two very slightly different ideas (one for wet and one for dry) for each scene. This way, it will not matter as much if the filming doesn't match our original intentions
There was a general assumption between the two of us that as far as acting goes we were much better off asking friends and family to be in our film, if not only to save ourselves from mutually assured corpsing the second a camera was pointed at us. However - in all honesty - I can't say I know anybody who owes me a big enough favour to agree to act in our film, so it is likely that we will end up taking on roles ourselves. As the quality of the acting is probably our biggest roadblock, we attempt to side-step this by taking the emphasis off acting and thinking more about our actual shots and the mood of our scenes, similar to more slow-paced works, for example, There Will Be Blood and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Which is certainly not to say that I won't deliver the Oscar nominated performance of the century...

Inspirations (read: excuses to post great film openings)

Having quite similar taste, the pair of us made a list of films with opening sequences that we particularly enjoyed or that stayed in our minds for whatever reason, but this notepad was pretty much an exercise in long-winditudinalality and so I took it upon myself to post my own personal High Fidelity-esque Top 5 Opening Sequences:

5:

- Touch of Evil (1958)

One of the most revered and innovative tracking shots ever, Orson Welles' crime thriller has stood the test of time and over 50 years on this opening sequence still wows its viewers (well, me). It's just cool as.

4:


Another critically acclaimed opening sequence, here Fellini shows us how silence can be utilised to contrast and accentuate the sounds of a man having a panic attack. This opening particularly influenced my ideas of the second scene of our opening, in the way silence can make a viewer feel uncomfortable rather than stumbled, keeping them on the edge instead of using scare chords to knock them off it.

3: 
http://youtu.be/WokcHt5UQ-M
- A History of Violence (2005)
seriously youtube, have I wronged you in some way?

Again, a BIG(!) influence on my ideas, Cronenberg manages to keep your attention during this sequence despite extremely little being said/described or happening. This guy has been making crazy weird films almost 40 years now. I think there is some kind of bizarre correlation between being a successful director and having David as your first name. Will research.

2: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHn1zogeyO4
- Lord of War (2005)
boo you youtube let me embed this waghhhh

Was this the greatest film ever? Not by a long shot (lol). But it is quite possibly Nick Cage's finest performance in recent years and this opening alone makes it well worth watching.

1:

- Magnolia (1999)
 I just think this is the bee's knees.

Honorable mention goes to Stranger than Fiction, A Serious Man, Amelie, Begotten (ewwww) and particularly Enter the Void for being really quite insane.