Props Galore

The main prop we use throughout our opening is an ace of spades playing card which is incorporated into our film by the technique of being our McGuffin. Our original idea was to, instead of using a playing card, to use a death tarot card to get across from the start that this was going to be a dark movie. However when we looked at what we could realistically achieve, we realised that it was going to be hard to get a tarot card as we had no idea where to get one from and also some members of my group where concerned about the superstitions that are behind a death card. So I decided to research if there were any other cards we could use in order to subtly imply the idea that death was coming and found that the ace of spades was the perfect card. According to websites such as wikipedia this card is the 'death card' in the pack and so we decided that this would be a more suitable object to use.

We then had to look at how we were going to get the card to 'fly' around the screen in the typical McGuffin style. We decided that the most effective and cheapest way we could do this was to use a bit of fishing wire, as it is so thin that the camera was not able to pick it up. We first tried this by attaching it to the card with sellotape and lying it on the floor so we could drag it around the grass. After looking back over the shots we had taken of this we decided that it wasn't very good because you could still see the wire in the grass so we had to have a rethink. This resulted in us changing from not going along the floor but so we held the card in the air to create the feeling of flying, like in Forrest Gump. This worked a lot better and is the idea that we finally used in our opening.

Another prop that was quite vital to the making of our film was the fairytale book that we used at the beginning of our film. The story being read was going to reflect what was happening later in the film so we needed to get an appropriate book to show this. The book we decided on was one that had actually belonged to Georgia's stepmum so it looked appropriately old (as the book in the movie was meant to come from her Grandma) and fitted the criteria by being an authentic-looking fairytale.

These were our 3 main props but of course we did use others; including a teddy bear to make the idea that it was a little girls room more real and by making the 'hero' in our story wear a suit it got this idea that he was different across to the audience.