HW 1b - Reflections on my film still (BLK)

Our Film Still
(Featuring Noa and myself. Taken by Emilio)

From this film still the audience could deduce that the movie is most likely to be a horror due to the element of darkness and unnatural lighting in the frame. The frame within a frame acts as a signifier, perhaps suggesting that the movie is a psychological horror - the main character could be creating the 'monsters' for herself and they don't actually exist in real life.

Technical choices:
First of all, to create the desired effect we had to find a dark space; to ensure that no extra light was seen in the frame we closed all curtains and turned off all lights.
Noa acts as the main character and she is in a medium close-up, this makes the audience feel more involved in the story. In the background, however, you can see me creeping up on her, to be able to fit into the frame I had to stand on a bench but also crouch a little.
We used one light which was held by the 'camera man', we did this in order to only shine light upon the main character in the foreground and keep the rest of the frame very dark. We used a filter over the light to give it a blue tone in order to create that unnatural atmosphere.
We found a small prop and used that to create a frame within a frame, Noa had to hold this herself and so we conveniently cut that out of the frame.

Interpretations:
Using this film still we hoped that our audience would interpret:

• The use of a frame within a frame is metaphorical for how all of the nightmares are just in the main characters head, they're not real, they only exist in her world. This puts the film in the sub-genre Psychological horror. It symbolises the mental cage she has created for herself.
• The main character isn't looking directly at the monster and has no fear on her face which could suggest that she isn't aware of what is behind her, she's only just about to find out. But the audience could also interpret it differently - they could see her as being curious instead of scared and that this is metaphorical for 'fighting your own demons' and that the lead has to face her fears.
• The lighting used is very unwelcoming as it is not a soft, yellow light, instead it is quite harsh and cold. This could highlight to the audience that this is a dangerous scene but also quite unearthly and unnatural. The light only focuses on the protagonist , almost like a spotlight, this reveals that the monster is only focused on her and no one else. It also creates this image of good vs bad, the dark around her representing evil and the light representing good.
• The 'evil' in the background is hard to make out due to the darkness, this shows the mystery that we do not yet fully know what it is that's chasing the main character.
• Another small detail the audience  may have picked up on is the fact that the frame encasing the protagonist is slightly crooked. As the small frame is something that the character looks through it could be interpreted as her view on the world, as it's a little crooked this shows that she perceives the world differently to other people. As already established the movie is a phychological horror and so the frame could be a visual representation of the mental illness that has caused the lead to hallucinate, or it could also be interpreted the trauma that the character has experienced has made her 'crooked' and therefore quite unwell.

Conclusion: 
To summarise, I think we worked very well in a team and managed to integrate all of our individual ideas together.Personally I think the most successful aspect of our shot was the use of lighting in order to set the tone and also the use of a frame in a frame to create deeper meaning to the shot.
If we were to re-do the task I would probably want to use more lighting technique to accentuate the monster in the background a little bit more. In order to create a bit more mystery or suspense i would probably used a coloured light (such as blue, purple, or green) to shine in the background to create a bigger threat and feeling of danger.