'Albatross' - Continuing

Since my last post on 'Albatross' my group and I had two lesson periods to go out and film a short film lasting two to three minutes, related to the title that we were given by our class teacher (Albatross). As previously posted, as a group we carried out some research in order to establish what the word 'albatross' actually meant. We discovered it was related to both good and bad luck and that it could be associated with a burden. Therefore, the plot of our short sequence involved what seemed to be a happy/successful looking career woman having a mysterious, unwanted stalker. This represented the burden, as he was constantly around her and in her thoughts. Bad luck was also mentioned in the research we looked at, so to portray this in our film we decided to use three drains which are well known to a lot of people, regardless of whether they are superstitious or not, as being unlucky. In this instance we used 'setting and props' from Mise En Scene as an effective way of subtley hinting to the audience that this man represented something bad. Furthermore, by doing this, it also meant we were foreshadowing events that happened later on in the film, which of course, were not very pleasant.

In terms of make up and costume, the man who was the stalker wore all black. Black is seen as a dark and mysterious colour, as well as being quite evil, meaning this also went well with the theme of bad luck as his appearance appeared untrusting. The career woman however was dressed in a smart business suit, emphasising her success and wealth, perhaps the stalker is jealous of her? In addition, the location too contributed in fabrigating her wealthy life style seeing as there was a high end jewellers near by, we were able to get some shots of her looking at the various pieces of jewellery on offer, implying she had enough money to afford them.

When it came to lighting, many of our shots taken where down dark, gloomy alleyways - adding to the dim, slightly scary atmosphere that we were trying to create. Tom (who played the stalker) was constantly seen appearing behind Emily (who played the career woman) indicating he is constantly in the back of her mind, never leaving her. In one particular scene, he is seen sitting on a roof top towering over Emily as she walks past. Even though in real terms Emily is above him in social status, he is above her in terms of power. When we were filming shots that involved Emily alone without Tom, we tried to make sure that within every shot was an upmarket shop/restaurant to really hit home to the audience her social class. More over, we also included Tom in a lot of background shots, with Emily in the foreground, as we wanted to ensure the audience knew of his continuous presence. - so where characters where placed within the frame was of big importance.
Lastly, the facial expressions used by the stalker were always blank-faced with a strong undeterd stare. As though he is fixated with watching her. His eyes were also squinting to give off a look of evil. The body language he used went well with his facial expressions, he often had his hand in his pockets representing his dominance and once again control over her.
Overall I feel we used the five elements of Mise En Scene well and in my personal opinion achieved getting our point across to the audience about what was going on in the film and the way in which the characters were portrayed. Having said this, the quality of our filming was not always consistent as some shots are rather clumsy. However we did the best we could within the time scale that we were given.