Props

In our Thriller we used several props, including simple desk utilities to some more complicated props to acquire. To begin with for the first shot in the office we needed normal desk utilities such as a mug, a book, pens/pencils, a chair, a hard drive and a laptop to work on. We needed these props to be able to set the scene and show that this is where our character worked in her house, we thought that the props which we selected would make that clear, luckily most of these props were available on set, at the house we were filming at. As for the laptop and the hard drive, I brought my own Apple Mac book, a few days before when I was creating the pin boards I equally created what the desktop would look like on the computer when she would be working on the computer; My group and I decided that we wanted some sort of connection between what was on the pin boards and what as on screen so i found a 2 different photos of the same fugitive and put one on the pin board and one on the screen. The desktop also featured a government document in the form of a “Pages” (the Apple equivalent of Word) file, so that our character could actually be working on it and typing it up. Also on the on screen was two photos taken from drones of different people which adds to the effect of our character being a person who works for the government or an agency.

Computer desktop

Photo of fugitive both on screen and on the pin board

Mood Board of props needed for office scene

Apple computer needed for shoot

Our main prop for the fight scene between the intruder and the main character is a sugar glass bottle in the shape of a Smirnoff Vodka bottle. We wanted our character to fight with a common household item to show that the use of this weapon was in the spur of the moment and that our character is a quick thinker because we thought that this would dd to the effect that this women was possibly trained to fight because she is a detective. We also wanted something to add a “WOW” factor and some individuality to our thriller and we believed that we would be able to get this from this sugar glass bottle. According to Wikipedia sugar glass is: “… also called candy glass, edible glass, and breakaway glass. It is a brittle transparent form of sugar used to simulate glass in movies, photographs and plays. It is much less likely to cause injuries than real glass, and it easily breaks convincingly, making it an excellent choice for stunts.” Sugar Glass is created by dissolving sugar in water and heating this to about 150 degrees celsius, then letting in cool down in the mood of water ever you want to create, in our case a Smirnoff vodka bottle.

Tutorial on how to create sugar glass.

We ordered three sugar glass bottles from the company Flints, Flints describe them selves on their website as “Flints are the major retailer of theatrical goods in the UK. Our buying power allows us to pass on excellent value to our customers and our unrivalled experience ensures that the products we stock are perfectly suited to the industry. In recent years we have expanded our client base to include schools, shop display, museums, the film, television and marine industries.” We were tolled that the bottles had to be mailed to us because they could not be picked up in store, we were also tolled that the bottles are very fragile and that there was a high probability that they would brake whilst being mailed to us, but we decided to take the risk and order the bottles. Bellow is a video of my group member called Zell ordering the sugar glass bottles:

Ordering Sugar Glass bottles

The 3 bottles ended up arriving to the school not broken and in perfect condition, they were in a box filled with protective material to ensure that the bottles would not break on there journey to the school. we received the bottle 3 days before our shoot day and we were successfully able to use two out of the three bottles on our shoot day. We only used two out of the tree bottles because we believed that we had gotten the shots which we needed and that it looked good, and that we might be able to sell the third bottle and get some of our money back. Bellow are photos of the unboxing of the sugar glass bottles:

As for the detective type Pin Boards, I created them myself, the process began by me doing some research into what these detective type inboards usually look like, i find things like terrorist information type pin boards or simply some for a murder, I saw that stereotypically in movies most photos were connected with what seemed to be red string but I looked into it and apparently this technique is not often used in the actual profession. So I started searching google images for certain things which I thought would come up with some good results which i could use on the pin board, I searched such things as: fugitive, drone photo, terrorist, maps, jail photo’s, CIA/FBI files, confidential files, etc. Once I found the photos which i wanted, i copied the photos on to a pages document, normally with several photos per page and then i printed it out, unfortunately the printer in our school could only print in black and white. Once I had printed the photos I cut them all out and started drawing on them with highlighters and and pens as if the detective started writing notes on them. I also drew on postit notes to add some more notes to on to the pin boards. Once I had laid out the photos on the board in an arrangement that I liked i pinned the photos down. Bellow are photos of how the inboards turned out: