Filming - half term

Over half term, Gina and I rented a school camera to begin filming small sections of our film and draft the basic ideas and camera angles we will use in the real thing. Some footage worked out extremely well and may just be used in the final piece such as aerial shots of the OCD girl cutting up fruit in the kitchen. The naturalistic lighting appealed in these shots, spilling though onto the scene through carefully angled shots while other's, such as those shot in the bathroom, failed to capture enough light making them seem increasingly cold and dramatic.
We struggled with the steadiness of the camera during shots where the angle and most awkwardly height of the camera was hard to sustain. We had to improvise, using things such as a broom, chairs, stool, tables at one point a washing rack and very sturdy handyman skills.
One scene we were dissapointed with was the most important shot of them all, the final shot that focused on the OCD girl, crying silently into her breakfast. The angle felt slightly unstable as well as the scenes in the dining room. These may have to be filmed over again.

Decided Settings

We have decided that we need to have a kitchen, a bathroom, a bedroom and a dining room. Props will consist of average household items to create a realistic scene and specific items we have thought about previously, such as a picture frame, basic kitchen equipment and shower cap.
Some items, we had to make special arrangements such as the calendar, as both Gina and I did not have access to one, we had to borrow this from a friend.

OCD research

We did some research on OCD in order to convey our protagonist correctly. We found that sufferers can find themselves helpless to "irrational urges" such as obssessive cleaning or continually checking the doors and windows are locked. It is defined as an "anxiety disorder" and so our character would have to show distress and worry over the smallest of things. We found that their are five main types of OCD sufferers; these include:
Washers, those who wash compulsively
Checkers, those who check things (such as a painting is straight) over and over
Counters, those who count things or line things up in order/ symmetry
Doubters, those who doubt that something bad will happen
Hoarders, those who hoard things away for fear of something bad will happen

We also found that OCD in children (which is related more accurately to our teenage protagonist) may be mistaken for the real causes of ADD, Tourette's syndrome or autism.

We have decided our OCD girl will display symptoms of a checker and a counter and potentially a washer. 

Casting/Location

There are four characters we need to cast for our film opening. We needed to choose carefully who would play each part as the comedy needed to be put across in their performance. We knew almost straight away that we wanted our mutual friend Louise Weaver, a talented drama student, to play the role of the teenage girl with OCD. Shortly after we decided Ruby Harris, another talented drama student, should play the role of the rebel sister. We didn't know who to cast as the parents, but were advised by Louise to cast Joseph Poole as the dad and Paige Woods as the mom.

    
       OCD girl - Louise Weaver                                                                       Dad - Joseph Poole

       Mom - Paige Woods                                                                              Rebel Sister - Ruby Harris

From our preliminary tasks and weather difficulties, we decided it would be better to set our film indoors so as the sound would not be affected by background noise. For our film, we decided to use my house to film the scenes, including the bathroom, a bedroom, kitchen, dining room and hallway (staircase).

Storyboard

Script