3. People – Binaries
Our opening title sequence includes two characters of
binary opposites; the old vs. young and the innocent and
vulnerable vs. the corrupted and dangerous.
These are represented clearly in the difference between
the main Brownie Leader, presented in the costume of an
official Leader’s uniform, a middle-aged female who is
the antagonist in our film and the young Brownies. In
addition, we have the young, easily influenced girls and
strangely the second Brownie Leader who falls into this
category. This can be considered to challenge the
traditional conventions of a thriller whereby all characters
are meant to be either victims or culprits, but not
indifferent.
4. People – The Leader
Nicole and I decided to break the cliché by having our
antagonist played by a female rather than a typical male.
Our actress is pale and unassuming, with a small
physique, this challenges the conventions of an
antagonist further still, causing our psychological thriller
to be even more disturbing for our audience. It is for this
reason that we chose to have Maxine Elias play the
Leader’s role, as we could have found someone equally
experienced to play it, but it was the fact that Maxine was
so unassuming that made her part so scary.
5. People – The Leader
However, Maxine wore harsh facial expressions and
used cold, sharp tones when speaking in the beginning of
our film, thus foreshadowing her future actions later on in
the opening title sequence.
6. Theme - Gender
The Leader represents the older of the female gender,
she is cunning and portrays the female sex as a whole to
be manipulating. Her character is presented as someone
who can appear to be a normal member of society but
has a truly dark side and is ultimately a very conniving,
malicious woman.
This directly challenged the stereotype of women being
weak and vulnerable, represented by the young girls.
7. People – The Brownies
Our thriller puts a strong focus on the social group of
‘children,’ represented by the girls in Brownie uniform.
When deciding which uniforms to put on our actresses, I
had two key considerations. First that the uniforms be
obvious so that it is clear to our audience which youth
movement our narrative revolves around, and equally as
important, that they connote innocence and vulnerability.
8. People – The Brownies
Therefore, the girls were dressed in the traditional yellow
coloured uniform tops and jumpers as opposed to the
brown one as the obvious associations audiences tend to
make with the colour yellow are happiness, brightness,
and livelihood – all representations of and strongly linked
to youth and childhood.
These are accentuated by other aspects of the filming,
such as the music – a child’s lullaby, and camerawork,
e.g. an overhead, almost bird’s eye, high angle shot is
used to further the impression of vulnerability when the
Brownies are shown sleeping.
9. Theme - Age
Children in their youth are vulnerable to adults, especially
when sleeping and therefore if approached by an
attacker, they are most unlikely to be able to defend
themselves properly. This is widely considered even
more true for girls than boys as they are known to be the
weaker sex.
10. Theme - Age
Having all the uniform and knowledge about Guides too
(the GirlGuiding group of girls between the ages of 11
and 14), in addition to the willing actresses, our film could
have revolved around Guides rather than Brownies.
However, I suggested, and Nicole agreed, that it would
be more appropriate to have younger children in our film
as younger children tend to evoke stronger reactions
among audiences because they are generally considered
more innocent and vulnerable than older girls.
Through the means of costuming and having the girls
speak with a purposefully high-pitched tone, we
succeeded in creating the image of sweet, young,
trusting girls that denote innocence, vulnerability who
heavily depend on those of an older generation for care.
11. Location
Our film is situated in the woods, a typical camping
location for traditional Brownie Units.
This atmospheric setting allows for the use of pathetic
fallacy (the climate situation reflecting the mood) and
connotes the idea that even though something may
appear to be fine and safe in daylight, it can have a
strong and dangerous dark side, just like the main
Brownie Leader. This therefore reflects the idea that you
cannot trust those you think you know as you do not
know what they are really capable of.
12. Location
The fact that this site is shown to be so secluded and
isolated reflects the trust of the children and the parents
who send their children on these camps and therefore
acts as a warning right from the start, just as the lighting
in our film gets darker until it is pitch black outside, so too
is the mood of the film and the contents of it due to
become darker, scarier and ultimately creepier.
13.
14. Males
Not once in our entire sequence is a male character
presented or even referred to. Like on a traditional
Brownie camp, the rule in our film is ‘No boys allowed’!
I believe that the Leader who in physique is relatively
petite and even short takes on the role of the male as she
shows the characteristics that the audience would
associate with a male character, not a female.
