Fiction Adaptation: Preparation

In order to have all of my decor and props ready for filming day I had to undergo a lot of preparation. From both purchasing items and gathering my own items to use as well as personalising certain props.

Items I purchased for filming:

• Two vanity mirrors
• Pyjamas for the main character
• A man's shirt for the main character
• Notepad
• Marker pen
• Bed sheet

Items of my own and borrowed items:

(Props)

• Men's cologne (CK One)
• Collapsable chair
• Desk (really a vanity chest to fit in the room)
• Photo frame
• Laptop
• Books

(Decor)

• Candles
• Women's clothing on hangers
• Make-up bag
• Hair products
• Handbag
• Jewellery
• 'Girlfriend' greeting cards

I then prepared four different props for the film's plot...

Firstly I created a fake Facebook profile for the character Ben using Microsoft Paint and Adobe Photoshop. As I used a member of my course, I used his real Facebook profile as a template...

Original Facebook profile

Fake / transformed Facebook profile

Changes made:

• Name on profile (in 4 places)
• Name of girlfriend (in 3 places)
• Some photos changed in 'Photos' section
• Profile picture (the image is an uncropped version of the image in the prop photo of Ben used in the film)
• Cover photo
• The 'Friends' button changed to 'Add Friend'
• Removed occupation
• Created fake 'Timeline' posts for representation that he's in a happy relationship
• His name in the search bar
• The small profile name and picture changed from my own to an image of my actress and the character name, Dawn.

Here is the profile in film...

(Lighting to be fixed in post-production)

I then picked out a number of photos of the character Ben and the character of his girlfriend, Maddie. I used real images from Jordan (Ben) and his real girlfriend Charlotte (Maddie)'s Facebook profiles with their permission. The photos of Ben were to be stuck on the wall in-film along with images of Ben and Dawn from my photoshoot as well as one image to be framed as a prop. The photos of Maddie were to be used when Dawn rips up the images hidden in a book due to her hatred of the new girlfriend.

After carefully selecting and cropping the images, along with carefully selecting the best images from my photoshoot that portray Dawn and Ben's past happiness, I printed them out and cut out each image. Lastly, I placed an image of Ben in a frame to create the prop object for Dawn's use.

Before

After

Lastly, Dawn breaks her vanity mirror in the end scene of my film. So this meant keeping one mirror in tact for scenes of her using it unbroken, and breaking the second mirror before filming. This allowed me to avoid any accidents if my actress broke the mirror on set, along with having control of the end result of the broken mirror by doing it beforehand.

I took the mirror outside and lightly tapped areas of it with a hammer to carefully and strategically break it. I then glued certain loose pieces back on for the cracked reflection I needed in-film and kept other broken pieces to place around the mirror the make it more realistic that it has been thrown to the floor in-film.

Before

After

In film

I'm very pleased with how all of my props and decor turned out for use in my film. I think preparing all of the items beforehand and keeping organised benefitted me a lot on shoot day with it's smooth running and organisation, allowed areas such as using the broken mirror to be safer and allowed the quality of the props to be higher than it would have been if prepared last minute.