Filming Evaluation: Props

Props in our Opening Scene

We used a few props in our opening scene, there was the body bag that I made, the lambs heart I put in a jar, the rope I bought, the mask Olivia made and a hammer. There were a few props that we didn't use such as the retractable knife, the head in a jar that Jake made, and the killers book that Kelsey made. 

We decided that hanging the body bag from the ceiling would make it look more dramatic and also add to the conventions of a horror opening scene. It was quite hard to tie the body bag to the ceiling because the rope we were using was new and not very easy to knot but after a few attempts we were able to make it stay there. I think the body bag was very effective and added extra scariness to the scene. 

To explicitly show the genre of slasher, we closely filmed the heart in the jar. However the only problem is that we couldn't actually open the jar and get the heart out because it is screwed shut very tight and also would smell very much if we got it out as it has been in there for a while now. So we decided to film it to make it look like the killer is opening it but without actually opening it and in the end I think we made it work quite well. 

I bought some thin rope for tying Kelsey to the garage door with and it was good for that, but it looked too clean and unrealistic so I think we should have made it look dirtier somehow before filming the opening scene. Also, in the shot where Kelsey cuts the rope, it took too long for her to do it all herself so we cut the rope most of the way and then filmed it with it mostly cut and it is very obvious. We could have fixed this by having the rope turned round the other way so that the cut part wasn't visible. 

I bought a potato sack and then Olivia cut it up and put fake blood on it to make it look really creepy. I think it looked very good, although Olivia had problems with it when we were filming because it was scratchy on her face and it got hot underneath it. 

Olivia brought her hammer and put blood on the end of it and I think it worked really well and made the killer look much scarier than if she was just wearing the mask. The only problem with bringing the hammer was that we had to travel on public transport and it seems quite dodgy to have a hammer on a bus.