Props

Today was a process of contemplating props to use to create a sense of verisimilitude within our feature, that creates a sense of realism to disturb the audience. We understand that props are essential in building meaning as it forms part of the mise en scene. We decided that a chair was an essential prop, as  the pinnacle of our feature centres on the scene in which Daisy is tied to a chair, portraying a 'damsel in distress' with a sinister twist. We intend to use a chain to anchor Daisy to the chair, fulfilling a sense of verisimilitude - a piece of cloth/string would seem easy to break free from, whereas a chain suggests completely the opposite. It was also suggested that Daisy should wear a pearl necklace (which we plan to use to create a graphic match with the moon) in order to create a clear binary opposition: the white pearl will signify innocence and purity, which contrasts the dark, sinister environment she finds herself surrounded in. As a more subsidiary prop, it seemed appropriate to use a dog lead when shooting the scene in the woods/park to provide the environment with a purpose/reason - we felt this would still be a contributing factor in building a sense of verisimilitude and realism into the narrative. Guns and hammers where thrown into the equation, however, we didn't feel this would create the right ambience when taking into account the title of our production: "Dinner for Two". We had filmed a scene in which Dan places the chair, some rope and a rifle into the room Daisy would be held, however, we felt that since there was no gun shown in our opening scene (revealing Daisy being held as a kidknapp victim), it was pretty irrelevant to include a gun in this scene. We created a relistic design for our chloroform bottle, and glued it around a hairspray can to add realism and verisimilitude, using colours that made it clear to the audience that the substance I was handling was indeed very dangerous.

Above: Our self-made chloroform bottle.