Characters, costume, make-up, props and settings

When considering our characters, we wanted to create narrative enigmas surrounding them so we didn't want to give too much away. The opening shows two characters who the audience assume are friends but after reading the messages passed between the two of them, there isn't necessarily any proof of a friendship which creates questions about the relationship the characters share.

The two characters would seem completely normal to the average human being so revealing the characters little by little is a better way of gripping the audience so they never become bored of what they're seeing.

To blend the characters into the stereotypical teenage boy we used people with typically shoulder length, overgrown hair with no make-up and naturalistic costumes. We didn't need to purchase anything for our costumes as (being of the same age as our characters) we had the appropriate clothing to display our characters ages).

In terms of props, we relied on a working laptop and webcam in two different rooms. Although only one of each were shown in our piece the other laptop and webcam were used to enable us to show somebody on webcam, a key part in our opening. We had to create a 'top secret file' to progress the story and relieve one question (what is the file) that cues many more (such as; Why does a secret file concern young teenagers?, Who is the man in the file? and What does it say?). We used a red background for the file to ensure it's bold enough to stand out and put an image of a man in a suit on the front large enough so people can see it and assume the file concerns him.

Of course to include this we needed the printer as a prop to film printing the file. Hannah and I thought of a perhaps subtle, yet effective prop use of a mug. There is a scene where our main character turns around on his chair, gets up and grabs the mug and drinks from it while being followed by a pan from the camera. Including this scene breaks up the piece a little bit and creates a kind of relief for the audience after being confronted with lots of close-ups and extreme close-ups in succession.

The setting we used for the main characters room contains models of boats along with sails, oars and various other parts, suggesting that there could be an obsession with the nautical. If the audience were to take the assumption further they could then link this obsession with the reason he's interested in secret information (for example, when he was a child, his father may have been killed in the navy).