Task 3

For our task 3 3 minute film we wanted to focus on the theme of Christmas but give it an eerie twist. We wanted to challenge ourselves by choosing to film in an interior location which was small room at my student accommodation. and wanted to film in the dark instead of exterior like the last two tasks to switch it up. We bought small Christmas decorations from Poundland to use as our props. These included textured baubles, bells, wooden ornaments on a string and tinsels. We wanted to experiment with these props with light and shadows by using a singular light source which was my iPhone flash to manipulate light and dark. We recorded sounds from the props such as bells ringing, wooden sounds clanging and even improvised our own sound by using some water in a glass and using our fingers going around the brim of the glass to create a high-pitched sound provoking a visceral response from the audience which was the preferred response illustrated by the feedback written on the post it notes. We wanted to create an ominous atmosphere by using a dark room so the audience doesn’t know where the location is and using shadows as this has a negative and mysterious connotations. Our idea was to create juxtaposition between light and dark by using chiaroscuro lighting used in many horror films. Our sounds were also influenced by the short film ‘Meat Factory Earworms’ having intense and clear unsettling sounds of things such as a high pitched sound of squeaking glass, bells chiming, tape being pulled. We also wanted to put a message across that Christmas is repetitive every year shown by the use of repetition of our footage and speeding it up each time where the last shot is inferring that it’s going to repeat again linking back to the first shot and using a fade out.