Preliminary - The Stalker

Inez and I decided to brainstorm a few ideas to decide what theme our preliminary should be. We decided that we were going to film a thriller type drama which showed an implication of violence in. By making our preliminary with this theme, we believed that this could be the most eye-catching piece of drama that we could make as it would be full of tension and suspense for the audience.

After choosing a theme for our preliminary we came up the characters, settings and storyline. I played the victim and Inez was playing the role of the stalker. The film is from the stalker’s perspective. The film never shows what the stalker looks like, this would make the audience feel slightly on edge and add to the overall dramatic and creepy like atmosphere. Inez and I chose to film our preliminary mostly down a quiet alleyway and in an empty school. We chose these 2 main locations because of their quietness. The fact that no one else is around these places emphasises on the fact that someone is being “stalked”. The story starts with the victim finishing off some work in an empty classroom. She then puts a workbook in her bag, closes up her bag and continues to work on the computer.  Her phone then rings in the room next door so she gets up to get the phone. The victim misses the call and enters the original room with 2 folders with her work in. She then puts her folders and phone by her bag, not realising that her bag have mysteriously been opened. Without realising that someone has opened her bag and possibly taken something up the victim gets her coat on turns that computer off and gets ready to leave the room. The victim leaves the classroom and walks down a few flights of stairs and outside. Next you see the victim walking down and alleyway, looking behind her a few times as she thinks she can hear someone following her. Finally the victim reaches her car and goes into her bag to get her keys out. She then starts to become panicked as she realises her keys are not in there. The stalker then reaches into the camera view and puts their hand over the victims face. The screen then goes back and ends with the words “The Stalker” written across.

The scene in the classroom shows many close up shots of the victim. We chose this because we didn’t really want any background to be focused on; we only wanted to see what the victim was doing. As the victim leaves the room there is an extreme close up on her opening the door. The door opens very slowly which adds tension to the scene and also adds to the dramatic atmosphere. The scene then immediately cuts to the other side of the door and shows the victim walking down the flights of stairs. We filmed this from a birds eye view to just give another spatial perspective for the audience and to also make the victim look slightly insignificant and vulnerable. The next scene in down the alleyway used lots of long shots to show the background. The audience is still unaware of the kind of environment that the victim is in. However it does show the audience that the surroundings are empty apart from just the victim and the stalker. The final scene in which the car is shown in contains many short cuts showing the panic of the victim. The camera begins to get closer and closer to the victim telling the audience that the stalker is walking towards the victim. The camera then zooms back out slightly so the audience can see the stalker’s hand beginning to reach and touch the victim.

After cutting the scenes that we needed to in our preliminary Inez and I edited it. We choose to mute all diegetic sound and add in some non-diegetic music. We chose appropriate spooky sounding music which fitted the theme and style of our preliminary film. We then decided to make the film black and white to add to the overall atmosphere of the film. The changing to black and white increased the mysteriousness of the drama that we created.