As our trailer is based around 'institutions' hence the name of our trailer. I decided to research on institutions to gain more understanding about them. As our whole trailer was set inside of a institution we needed to know what types of props we were going to need, and what kind of scenery/background would work well to show an institution. As we were not allowed to go out of the college to film, we had to find somewhere within the college to use as our setting. Through research I found out that in mental institutions, patients are not allowed access to many objects, especially cords, cables, wires, stairways and high windows as these are seen as potential suicide threats and may cause harm for patients. So from this we knew that we would not need many props, as we wanted the setting to look as real as possible and therefore we would keep the objects in the shots to a minimal.
We decided to use a hallway with white walls, as the typical idea people have of mental hospitals is white padded walls, which is also an idea we have for our poster. The reason for the white walls in asylums/institutions is so that patients feel as they are in a softer environment, and feel more safe. White also has connotations of cleanliness and causes less of a distraction. There was also a red door in our setting which we think worked well as red has connotations of danger and blood, contrasting with the blood all over the props and setting, plus the idea that this character is on a rampage. The door represents her trying to escape, and the red could show that danger will occur if this patient escapes.
One horror I knew of that contained a psychiatric ward, and people who have been put into these institutions was 'Gothika' about a psychiatrist who wakes up to find herself as a patient in the hospital she works at. So this films shows a view from a worker and a patients point of view. It also shows how 'mental people' can be misunderstood and not treated how they should be. This film shows how a patient is raped but no one will believe her, so this indicates to me that in some cases, some patients are not as crazy as people believe. So taking this idea on board I informed the group of my findings and we decided that we wanted the character that we created to have some story behind her. This was the reason we used the child pyjamas and teddy bears as we wanted to create the idea that this women has the mentality of a child, and is living in the past.
We decided that in our last shot we would paint the words 'Why' on the floor in blood, so this would make the audience question what the meaning of this was, and so that they would use their imagination and be aware that this character may be questioning her reason for being in this institution.
Being an Eastenders fan I was aware of the story lines based around a mental illness on this programme. One of the main characters in this soap 'Stacey Slater' was diagnosed with bi-polar the manic depressive disorder and admitted to hospital. Remembering this storyline helped to come up with new ideas for our trailer, such as the vicious rocking we used, as in Eastenders the character was very paranoid and started to hear voices and developed erratic behaviour. We used the rocking to show that our character was not well, and in this shot we made sure that her arms were wrapped around her to show insecurity and blocking everything out.
I found out that some patients check themselves into hospitals due to stress, and not all are violent and have bizarre behaviour. One story I came across was about a normal family man who just could not handle the stress of his job any more and he knew it was starting to deteriorate him. The link below helped outline how these hospitals work and what goes on inside. As this is facts and does not come from a movie or soap opera it meant that we had more knowledge on how they really work, and therefore we knew we wanted to contain some sort of realism within our trailer. This is why we did not want to use 'ghosts' or 'zombies' as we just wanted to focus on one character as this is more realistic. as we were going for the psychological thriller sub genre, we wanted to make it look as realistic as possible. Although we used blood this was because we wanted our character to have been on a rampage to break out of the institution but we wanted to leave the audience in suspense of the reasons behind her rampage, as the main aim of a teaser trailer is to tease.
http://www.moodletter.com/Hospitalization.htm
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