I know that Ideally, I should have had all this up before I shot the thing but I just couldn’t find the time/ I planned all of it on paper(which I find more helpful as you can draw). So now I’ll share some of my ideas/plans and reflect a little on the production.

I had the script set in Henry’s living room but I did not want to follow the text description, instead I wanted to try and build some kind of tension using the same dialogue. My inital idea was to set it in a post apocalyptic survival situation, however I quickly realised that to pull that off believably I would need a lot of props/makeup. Instead I went for something with a bit more imminent danger I used the idea of a home invasion or similar situation. Within the scene Steve and Gloria would be the nervy ones anxious about their safety whilst their calm protector. Henry fed up with their anxiety, reassures them. The scene aimed to climax as the door rings with Henry getting up to answer.

because I have been researching decoupage and montage for my research question I tried to create a kind of decoupage technique rather than a simple story board.

I had the aim to use Eisenstein’s model of conflict to generate graphic tension in the montage of the kidnapper. I’m not sure If I really ended up achieving this as I found it difficult to translate the theory into practise / I really did not plan it enough and just settled for a decent composition.

Here are some shots of my plans hopefully they are semi legible on the blog.

Some character notes

Henry: calm, dangerous, gets shit done, is becoming annoyed with the pairs persistent anxiety, has no personal relationship with the pair

Gloria: Anxious, confused has some kind of personal relationship with Steve

Steve: anxious, paranoid, coward

some other notes

Tone/ mood: tense moments before climax

I also decided to not return to the same shot, although frames are similar they involved different setups

In hindsight my sound quality was pretty bad I needed an extra sound recordists I had to source some of the foley because the some of the stuff I recorded maxed out and was unusable. This was my first time using my new camera so I was unsure of the quality of the mic and didn’t have time to test it in-between friday/monday so in post I realised that you can actually hear it’s fan running which I tried to repair as much as I could, I think I did an alright job but I could not erase it completely. I feel like my planning did not inform as many formal decisions as I had wanted but perhaps it did more than I thought, I’ll have to wait to get feedback.

I might update this with a vimeo link once its ready