Planning for The Asylum (2)

The Asylum Planning:

Curtis

Casting:

Curtis - 'Smiley Pete'
Reasons for:

• Comfortable with the role
• Featured in the microdrama
• Male - Stereotypical killer

This was my role, i felt that i could play this role well. We did have difficulty with our options for the killer, as we were working in a group of 3 and one member was the director leaving two of us. Our friends were resistant to the idea of helping us out and acting. However, i was already certain that this was the role i would be playing.

Jake

Jake - 'Dr. Cruger'
Reasons for:

• Comfortable with the role
• Featured in the microdrama
• Male - Stereotypical doctor
• Short on options
• Our other team member would not suit the role

We cast Jake as the role for our doctor because he had previously acted before in our microdrama. Again we were limited on options for our roles because there was only three of us in our group and our friends were resistant to act

Heather

Heather - Scream Queen
Reasons for:

• We wanted to include a key slasher convention
• Blonde (stereotype)
• Has acted before (drama)
• She was comfortable with her role

Heather is a good friend of ours and we were delighted when she offered to play the role of our scream queen. Heather would be playing a vital role in our opening and due to her experience in acting she was happy with the role she would be playing. The only problem with Heather was that we would have to get everything in our shoot spot on and not need to do any re-shoots as Heather was only available for one day. Therefore we have planned the suitable day.

Location:


We plan to split our opening between two locations to provide an ellipsis to our audience to anchor this we will include exposition of some sort. As we will provide an establishing shot of a mental asylum - which will be detailed below. Our killer returns to the doctors house to seek his revenge. This is why we plan to shoot our film on two locations.

Location 1: Jakes House (Manor Park)
Reasons for:

• Easily accessible for our cast
• Ideal for killing scenes
• Lots of props we can use for mise en scene
• Anchors the doctors lifestyle (as a car will be involved)

This is where our killer will come to seek his revenge. We feel that this is a good location for our film because it anchors the doctors lifestyle to the audience. We also have a range of rooms we can shoot in to suit our production as well as the fact of on set mise en scene provided. However, we can only shoot here at certain times during the week therefore we have linked our time management in with Heather's schedule. 

Manor Park 

Location 2: High Royds (Menston)

Reasons for:

• We don't have a schedule for when we can shoot here
• An old mental asylum
• Provides good exposition
• Easily accessible 
• Ideal for our opening shot

This will be where our film opening starts, at this location. We feel that this will also provide a key exposition to the audience as our killer will be 'escaping' from this. The benefits of this location are that Heather is not needed for our shoot on this location as she won't have been included in the opening until there is the house scene. Therefore we are not limited for time for when we can shoot on this location and any re-shoots will not be a problem for us.

Mise En Scene:

Costume:
Each of our characters will have a certain costume to fit their role e.g. the doctor will be wearing a white lab coat and 'smiley pete' will be wearing a patients gown to signify that he is a patient with in the asylum. Also this will create a sense of realism in our opening.

Weapon:
Kitchen Knife we used intertextuality from Psycho for this idea because it was the original weapon and we decided we wanted our work to contain intertextuality to appeal to our secondary audience. 

Use of the forrest which is right next to High Royds for an escape route for 'Smiley Pete'. This is a location the is used in many films, as somewhere to run/ escape for example The Last House On The Left.

The forest is an option for us, we are not certain that it will be used in our opening as we haven't planned an escape scene

Here is a video about High Royds mental asylum: