THEY HAVE CHANGED SOMETHING ON BLOGSPOT BUT I CAN'T QUITE PLACE WHAT.
Anyway...
We have decided to replace the conversation with Hannah and Jess with a shorter argument between the two of them, and then a dream where Jess feels all guilty and stuff. But a weird dream like, abstract and all that. We thought that would be more dramatic and interesting than their conversation that's in the first draft, plus it gives more of an insight into Jess's character. We went out today and filmed everything that we need. Because all of the images in the dream have some form of meaning, and aren't just random to fill time, I thought I'd describe what they mean. The pictures aren't in order because blogspot hates me.
I have a feeling this is going to be a long post.
We included two memory shots in our dream sequence. There is this one, the long shot of Jess and me on the log and the mid shot of Jess and me playing around with a guitar. Both of these shots have high key lighting and are highly saturated so that it is clear to the audience that it is not happening in the time of the film, and that it is part of a memory or dream. These two shots give some context to the opening, because it shows that my character and Jess's were friends and spent a lot of time together, making her killing my character more dramatic.
The two shots above and below depict a well and Esther standing by the same well. The inspiration for the well came from The Ring, although the use of a well in our opening holds a different meaning. It represents Jess being lost or trapped by Esther, like being trapped in a well. It also shows there's more to what is happening than meets the eye, because you can only see the top part of the well and not the part that goes underground. The intercut shots of Esther represent that she has control over Jess, and is the one keeping her trapped at the bottom of her metaphorical well.
Welcome to the inside of Jess's mind. Although they may be hard to make out, the plants in the shot are stinging nettles and other sharp, thorny looking plants, representing that Jess's mind is being taken over by weeds. The lighting is quite bright, although there are some shadows, which were used to represent the darkness that is overtaking Jess's mind. The arch represents the exit to Jess's mind, and in another shot, Esther is standing in front of it, blocking Jess's exit, showing that Esther is controlling her.
This shot shows Jess's face and then pans down to show bloody hands, representing that Jess feels she had my character's blood on her hands. Which she does. Because she killed her.
There are a lot of nature shots in our dream sequence. We chose a park location for the majority of our clips, because nature traditionally is used to represent life and friendship and beauty etc, which probably stems from the Bible or something, I don't know, but these are key themes to our film. The idea that Jess and my character's friendship was good is represented by the high key lighting of the trees, but nature dies, as did their friendship. Well, their friendship didn't die, I did, but you know what I mean. We have it quite near the beginning, because we use more positive clips in the beginning of the dream because then the bad clips reflect that things are going badly for Jess and that Esther's popping up everywhere, even in her dreams.
I really like these clips. There's two of them, and they show Esther and Jess mimicking each other. The low key lighting and stop motion blur effect represent Hannah making things unclear for Jess, and fogging up her brain. It also shows Esther control Jess, like puppet and master. The inspiration for this clip actually came from mine and Hannah's drama GCSE. In Hannah's play, there was a scene where a girl playing Ian Brady was standing on a chair over our friend Livvy, who was playing Myra Hindley, and was manipulating imaginary strings over Livvy to make her move like a puppet, whilst the others in the group held up boards. It was so effective, and the music they used was so good and argh okay I'm going to stop fangirling now. But anyway, that was our inspiration for this clip.
Butterflies traditionally signify beauty and innocence and freedom, so we thought it fitting that we show one in our dream sequence, to represent Jess's innocence flying away. It also shows that Jess realises the freedom in her mind is slipping away, and that she is a prisoner to her own mind.
This wall is crumbling, which represents the walls of Jess's mind crumbling around her. There's a blurry effect on it to give the same effect as the scene with Esther and Jess mimicking each other.
There are other clips, but their meanings are more obvious, such as a DANGER sign.
