Buying props and costumes

Buying props

Fancy shoes 

The first prop of choice is fancy shoes. We need these because one of the most important aspects in our opening scene is how you don't know what the man looks like, this will give of a very mysterious and unusual vibe. We are going to give close-ups of feet and other parts which will be all in black so we therefore thought we need them covered. We especially chose the colour black, as it suggests a sense of darkness. We found some dark black leather shoes on which cost around £30. We think this a reasonable price and they were perfect so we bought them. The shoes will be need to be fancy because they suggest to Autem’s intelligence, as they contrast with everything else in the ward.

Roses

Another prop that we have is roses and glitter. We are going to use roses to represent each character’s emotions figuratively. They are going to be in a broken glass vase to create the effect of violence, danger and anger contrasting with the roses representation of love. The glitter will be gold as it is regarded as a colour which heavily represents the desire to receive for the self alone.  We are focusing a lot on colour in our film and using such ‘representations’ to our advantage, therefore the roses will be red, black and white, each representation one character; Red for the girl, Black for Anger, and White for Kindness. We are being provided roses by a friend. The glitter we have is in little pots and was found in some old arts and crafts box. 

Sugar glass

We are going to make our own sugar glass. We have researched a recipe and are going to present it in a video format.

 


Styrofoam heads 

Masks and Styrofoam heads. We are using these props to highlight his dual personality disorder and to show his obsessive and weird personality. I think this prop will stand out a lot to the viewers as it is quite creepy and not expected. There will be 8 white Styrofoam heads on the wall all wearing white plain masks. Engraved underneath each head on wooden planks, will be a range of 'emotions' (another word for personalities) for each head respectively. They will appear in the ending sequence of the film and will be there to heighten the effect of fear and confusion. The heads and mask will be male gendered as it correlates to his identity.  A male suffer of dual personality disorder commonly has a variation of 8 different personalities, therefore we will reflect that in our film too. We want to show that there is more to Autem, and that he is not exclusive to only two personalities, he is more complex and has more ‘tricks up his sleeve’. Making him have this complexity gives me the opportunity to build on him as a character later on if a longer film was ever to be made.

I chose Styrofoam because I can’t afford special-fx realistic looking heads, Ideally the heads would look more realistic and have no facial features. The masks, however, would stay similar, in an ideal scenario, I would keep them plane and have no mouth hole, they will still have a mouth dent and a nose bulge, but no holes. We will be using masks because they will help mask his identity, since each emotion (personality) will all share identically looking masks, any victim of his will not know what personality state he is in, making Autem appear more threatening and unpredictable. 

Wood planks 

To visually represent each personality of his I will need to create a format that looks realistic to be found in a prison but still is creative. Therefore, I thought of wood planks sourced from the warden’s desk. Wardens usually have fancy desks made of some hardwood as seen in these examples: 

(Shawshank redemption warden's desk below the vinyl player)

(An actual, real-life warden's office desk somewhere in america )

 

I would imagine Autem wanting to keep his masks display organised and therefore want to label everything, so to stay creative he would cut chunks of wood out of the warden's office desk or other furniture and carve out the names of his personalities on each plank. 

Vinyl player 

After analysing Shawshank redemption, and a few other films, I saw that most wardens’ offices have a vinyl player or some sort of music playing device. I did some research as to why that is, and stumbled upon an article on the psychological benefits of listening to music at work. 

Listening to music at work has been linked to a reduction of stress levels, and an increase in motivation, and in most cases, concentration too. I would imagine that being a warden of an insane asylum is not an easy job, and it probably is not a calming environment too. So, from a logical standpoint, playing music while the warden is in his office, will probably help calm his/her nerves a bit, and distract him from the literal insanity that his happening outside their door. 

Therefore, I will add a vinyl player to Autem’s office because, it can probably help distract him from his problems, reducing his stress and anger personality appearances. 

[All images shown are not photographs of the actual props we are going to use]