Set Design

This blog will be a short blog just about my set design, it may be a useless blog to write but I was very pleased with my set design and so thought I could write a little about it. As everyone is well aware by now, I filmed in two locations, at home for scene 1, 2 and 4, and in a barn for scene 3. I didn’t really do much in terms of set design for the first location other than the simple addition of candles, to link through to the nightmare scene, and the writing on the mirror. Everything else in the room for those scenes is always in my room and so setting up for this was just a matter of putting out some candles, making some fake cocaine, and making my bed. For my second location, the barn, I did a lot more with the set design, I brought a few of my own props, for example, mirrors and candles, but did also use some stuff that were laying around the location as props.

From what I have learnt about the horror genre over the past two years, I would say that the iconography and mise-en-scene of a horror film is very important, they help add to the atmosphere of the film which in turn adds to the suspense and chilling factor that ultimately build the whole film. Because of how important I personally view this to be, I really wanted to show this in my work and show an level of commitment to the scene that I really haven’t shown in any other projects.

My most important props to this shoot were the use of mirrors and candles, as both of these are practical props, so actually have some use to the filming. Both of these items are quite common in horror, especially candles, they have been used throughout the history of horror, from some of the very first horrors, like Dracula, to the recent modern horrors we know and love today, like Hereditary. Mirrors are also something I have seen quite a bit in horror, not as often, but I like the idea of them being some kind of portal for spirits and I have seen them used like that in many different ways, from films such as Oculus, to Halloween. These two props also linked back to my first two scenes where the rules were written on a mirror and where the candles were lit to help Ella’s character do the Tarot reading. Here are some pictures, and a link to a video, of the barn once decorated and ready for filming: