Planning - Development of our ideas for our practical

For our practical we have chosen to develop our 6 minute challenge idea. We came up with our rough 6 minute challenge idea with the help of the random selection of our location, an opening in a forest, and one prop, a diary, given in class which turned out to compliment each other very well. We then had to use Wikipedias' random article selection to give us the name of our film which was Biduiyeh-ye Nakhai. For the 6 minuet challenge the title of the film was well suited, but because we have chosen to develop that idea for our final practical we will either change the name completely or shorten it to make it better suited and not come across as confusing to our audience. We were pleased with the location and our prop but again we decided to developed them further to fit in better with the hybrid genre of our opening title sequence. So rather than just using the opening in a forest we will film in a variation of locations within a forest of our choice and instead of a handwritten diary we will be using a video camera for a video diary which our main character will be documenting his experience on. Because we are doing it in the style of a documentary we want to create a sense of realism and to do that we will use everyday props, costume, location and characters that aren't out of the ordinary. As an example for a prop we will use a sleeping bag, our main character will be someone our primary target audience can relate to, his costume will be a stereotypical 'normal' everyday outfit and we will only be filming in one location, a nearby forest which will most likely be Highgate Wood in Muswell Hill, as it is nearest our college and therefore will not have to carry the filming equipment far.

So, as mentioned before our chosen genre is a hybrid combination of Horror and Documentary as we will film our opening sequence in the style of a documentary but the storyline is fictional. This is some context about the film as a whole as we have decided that the opening title sequence will actually be the films ending. Our main character is a 21 year old male who is on his gap year and has decided to travel. He has travelled to the town of Biduiyeh-ye Nakhai to gather film footage on the types of wildlife found in the towns' forest. However there are many ancient stories about a family that were driven out of the small town into the forest and never returned. During his research into his trip he discovers these myths about the missing family and then after some further research he uncovers lots of articles about missing people who have visited the same forest, from tourists to locals to film crews all entering the forest and never returning. The last report was on a film crew dated back in 1997 which was 19 years ago so he thinks nothing of it and is still determined to complete his documentary film.

A brief summary of our possible storyline -
He arrives in the forest and creates a video diary explaining where he is and why he's out there, then begins to shoot footage of his surroundings. He then starts to hear weird noises further inward the forest so follows them and then discovers some birds in the trees and documents them. The only filming the audience see is what he films, it then begins to cut from each day and small bits of footage show what he is documenting per day. The credits will appear randomly onscreen and flow well with what is already onscreen so it doesn't distract the audience from the film. The footage gets to about day 5 when he documents himself saying he needs to return to the town so follows his GPS tracker in the right direction. He then notices that although he's been following the tracker all day he is not any closer than when he first set off, it starts to get dark so he sets up his sleeping bag for the night and says he will try again tomorrow. As he starts off again on his journey home he hears the same noises from when he first arrives but they are louder and seem to be following him, so he films where the noises are coming from and sees a strange figure behind the trees and looks up but there's nothing there then looks into his camera again and the figure is getting closer and closer so he begins to run as the noises are still behind him. Then the camera shuts off. The ending of the title sequence will be him filming himself saying how he can't get out of the forest and something in there is after him then the camera battery dies. The film will then go on to explain who he is, his life before this and how he got himself in that situation.

Here is the mindmap of our brief ideas on mise-en-scene and storyline-