TESTING OUT DIYs/PRACTICAL PROPS

 Testing Out DIYs/Practical Props.

I tested out the majority of the DIY projects and practical props, as I wanted to ensure that they worked before writing a narrative revolved around them.

After purchasing/sourcing the props and ingredients for our opening sequence, I firstly went ahead and attempted recreating what our set may look like on my own desk. This was because my desk is roughly the same size than that of the one in Beatrice Webb garden room. I did this to spark some creativity within me for the brief narrative breakdown, to test practicality, and to also communicate my ideas to the group better.

OVERALL SET.

The first thing I did was clear out my desk; I managed to store everything in my storage rack next to my desk (as I knew this would be up for at least a few days), apart from my monitor as I didn't want to have to re-feed the wire through my desk again as I moved in recently.

I then experimented for a while, seeing what was pleasing to the eye and came up with the set to the right. I essentially left some books open, placed the skulls in various places, pinned up psychologically intense drawings from the internet and filled the desk with artistic clutter to depict that he is an artist. I hand drew the 'children's' drawings with crayons.

I ensured to keep the members of the family wearing the same colour each time, and to have sad expressions to portray his emotionally neglectful upbringing. In 2 of the 3 of them, he is murdering his sister; this was to illustrate how poor his relationship has been with her ever since childhood.

FUNNEL + DUCT TAPE.

This was a strange thing to attempt but I am thoroughly glad that I did; I am not that bothered when it comes to doing things like this as I have a high pain tolerance...

It did work, thankfully, but then came the issue of it hurting when pulling it off, as predicted (and that was only after 5 minutes of having it taped to my face). Also, I found that I was drooling uncomfortably. My tested solution to the first issue, was to use Blu Tack as a barrier; it is sticky but soft, and I have plenty of it. On the shoot day, we were planning on having two funnels; one for the bubbling liquid and one for Ezra to pour the poison into (taped to Susannah). The one that would actually be taped to her mouth would not have a pipe (we would cut it off and cover the edge with duct tape), so the latter issue shouldn't serve to be a problem. 

BERRIES.

Attaching the blade to the scalpel was rather difficult (I saw reviews on Amazon about this). However, I placed it underneath a roll of duct tape, pressing the blade down and sliding the holder in and managed to do it. I am glad that I noticed this before the shoot date as that could have wasted a lot of time. 

I then attempted to cut the berries but they were rolling around, so I got the tweezers out of the prop box and used them; at first, our group were tentative about the size of them but upon having this experience I realised that they would be far more practical for Ezra. They did leave some juice on the chopping board, but I was very fond of the way the berries sliced open whilst being squeezed by the tweezers.

As I will not have a pipette until the actual shoot day as they are being sourced by the science department, I had no choice but try my best to compare the Robinsons squash colour to the berries underneath strong lighting. To the naked eye, they seemed to match.

POTION REACTION/FAKE BLOOD.