Step Outline

Scene One - Alfie comes home, unlocks door. Walks straight through to living room, kicks shoes and bag off. Turns on TV. 'Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets' is playing, and the 'basilisk' appears on screen. Alfie cringes away from TV and runs out of room. See him running upstairs.

Scene Two - Alfie is upstairs getting changed and he looks at the bed. Snakes begin appearing all over his bed and Alfie freaks out.

Scene Three - Alfie is laid in bed reading a book, and decides to go to sleep.


Scene Four - Alfie starts to dream that he is sat ont he sofa watching the cartoon 'Phineas and Ferb'. Snakes start appearing around him, and he runs upstairs, scared.

Scene 5 - Alfie is under the duvet scared, whilst the big red snake follows him. Alfie faces his fear and overcomes his phobia of snakes.

Scene Six - Alfie wakes up in his bed, and gets out of the bed, happy.

The basilisk can be seen in the previous blog post, this is the cartoon 'Phineas and Ferb':

Stop-Motion Animation

We have decided to use stop-motion animation in the dream sequence as it will make the whole film appear more child-like. We may use elements of stop-motion animation in other parts of the film, as Alfie sees snakes appear out of nowhere. Stop-Motion will be a little time consuming, but should be achievable and should look quite effective. We have been looking at Stop-Motion Animation videos on youtube, and seen how smart the overall effect is. Here are some which we have looked at:

Step Outline

Scene One - Alfie comes home, unlocks door. Walks straight through to living room, kicks shoes and bag off. Turns on TV. 'Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets' is playing, and the 'basilisk'* appears on screen. Alfie cringes away from TV and runs out of room. See him running upstairs.

Scene Two - Alfie is upstairs getting changed and he looks at the bed. Snakes begin appearing all over his bed and Alfie freaks out. Hears his mum and dad come home, so he goes back downstairs.

Scene Three - His mum and dad have bought a new pet snake - Alfie's worst nightmare. He tells them he doesn't like snakes and won't hold the snake. He goes upstairs.

Scene Four - Alfie is laid in bed reading a book when mum comes in to say goodnight. They talk about why he doesn't like snakes.

Scene 5 - Alfie has a dream where snakes are chasing him, and he is running away. Snake eventually catches up with him and comforts him. Alfie seems happy.

Scene Six - Alfie wakes up in his bed, goes downstairs and wants to hold his snake. He is no longer scared.


* The 'basilisk' is a huge snake from the Harry Potter films. It looks like this:

Dream Sequence Idea

We have changed our dream sequence idea too. Now, we are going to have Alfie looking around normally, and lots of snakes being there - he does not react to them in everyday life. However, in his dream, he reacts to all the snakes and gets frightened. We will be buying 15 small stuffed snakes, green and 10cm long from IKEA to place around the house randomly, and 1 large stuffed IKEA snake, red and 1.5m long for in the dream sequence. We plan to use stop motion to animate the big red snake slithering towards him. It will be quite an abstract dream sequence, with lots of quick shots, odd camera angles and distorted colour.

Equilibrium

This is how we will use Equilibruim throughout the short film:

1. Equilibrium - Alfie gets home
2. Disequilibrium - Parents aren't there
3. Makes himself at home - turns on telly - 'Anaconda' is playing
4. Parents come home - equilibrium should be ok, but they have a new pet snake
5. Sleeps and dreams a scary dream of his pet snake chasing him
6. Wake up and holds his pet snake first time. And feels safe - equilibrium is restored. character has gone on a journey that will enrich his life.

Change of Plan

We have a new group member, Sam, and so we tried to think practically about how we could overcome certain obstacles. For example: we had to find a nursery rhyme book which included all of the nursery rhymes we needed. This proved to be difficult because we would of had to make our own, and we needed Jake and he was unavailable at the time. We also have to do some re-shooting, so we thought we could change the idea, and include Sam more, as she helped come up with the idea.

So, today in Media we decided we are now using a snake instead of a spider because it is more easily accessible for us. We also feel children are more inclined to be scared of snakes than spiders. We can now get rid of the Nursery Rhyme book which simplifies some of our problems, and we have a pet snake at our decided setting, which is used to being handled. We will have the 1997 film 'Anaconda' playing on the TV, as this relates well to snakes, obviously. And we can also have the boy dreaming his pet snake eats him, just like in the film 'Anaconda'. This simplifies our lack of spider films available. We have to do some re-shooting anyway, so changing the plot line isn't too complicated for us, it doesn't change our schedule. We plan to film at the weekend, and can start on the animation dream sequence this week.

Lesson Catch-Ups

When I use this title, I don't mean Curtis and I have missed any lessons, more on that I haven't blogged every lesson, because we had been stuck for filming and the book. We have been looking at various film sequences and doing some textual analysis to build on our ideas instead. We are only able to film at weekends really, because Alfie is at school all day, and Alex's house needs to be available. We can't just interrupt everything. Also, we need to have Jake help us with the nursery rhyme book, and he hasn't been in college the past week, and lives in Salisbury, so we can't get to him easily. However, we have been productive and trying to add ideas to make things clearer for the audience. We need to be sure everything is right before we film.

Script

Yesterday in Media, Curtis and I decided to start on the script. We only had an hour lesson, so we started writing the script by hand. We then went to use 'Scriptmaker' but it wasn't installed on the computer. So we called in the IT Technician to fix the problem, and began typing our script on 'Scriptmaker'. We got halfway through and the lesson ended. So we finished doing the script today.

Build on Story

We have stuck with the original idea of the nursery rhymes, and have thought more about how we can animate the dream sequence. We both have a mutual friend who is extremely good at art, who can help us with the dream sequence. Obviouisly he will be credited and we will do as much as we can, but he can be there to help tweak it and correct perspective mistakes we may make. We also thought about involving a packet of Haribo Horror mix sweets, and him visualising the spider, but I couldn't get hold of any Horror mix after Halloween went by. I think this would of been a good idea and a subtle extra touch, however it may have been too much spider-orientated visuals. Our film is aimed at somebody on the children's TV channel, and so the audience doesn't have the most complex mind, and I think one or two mention of spiders will be sufficient, instead of overloading their minds with spidrs, so they get lost in the moral of the story, which ironically, is infact NOT to be scared of spiders.

Spellbound Dream Sequence

As the viewer, I understand when the dream sequence begins, because it is clearly shown through a fade to black transition to the next scene. It's then shown through a fade from black into seeing all these eyes. Hitchcock used Dali as the designer for his dream sequence, and the combination of both their unique styles had a really good effect on the viewers in 1945. The zoom into one of the eyes keeps the reader intrigued and expecting something to happen. Instead, another shot of all these eyes, staring at the viewer, including them in the film. The camera never stops moving; in different directions with each overlapped shot. Another shot then fades in, and the eyes fade out, to be replaced by a stage surrounded by eyes. It zooms in to a stage full of people playing musical instruments. A close-up of the musicians fades in and the camera carries on zooming in. The camera then fades into close-up of an eye on the stage, with some man using giant scissors cutting it up from the viewers right to the viewers left; revealing another eye underneath the cut away eye. Another shot appears in the pupil of the eye, and the camera zooms in until a fade from back ends the dream sequence. All the transitions in this sequence fade and go to and from black. This helps the viewer understand that this IS the dream sequence. The lighting is very dark, even though it is a black and white film. There is a lot of contrast and dark moments, which help the viewer understand the surreality of the dream sequence. The mise-en-scene is interesting because Hitchcock and Dali's surreal dream sequence works really well in this scene, bacause the viewer clearly understands there is a dream going on; which is what Curtis and I need to be careful of not confusing the viewer and disrupting the continuity.