Brief: 

Out To Sea is based on a real news story in October 2017, about a boy and his stepdad who found a message in a bottle. In this version, we follow the story of a 9 year old girl named Billie, who is obsessed with pirates and explorers. She longs to be one when she grows up too. However, her father, Tim does not approve of this free spirited outlook in life and is more cynical. One day, Billie stays out late exploring the coast near their home and when Tim finds out, he forbids Billie from going to the beach saying that it is too dangerous for her to go alone. Some time later, Billie finds a message in a bottle (without Tim's knowledge of course). Tim catches her with the bottle at home and berates her for going back to the beach. But upon knowing that she is having some difficulties from the girls in school, he decided to humour her and extract the message from the bottle. He sees that the message is actually a note of two guys high on cocaine the night before but pretends that the note is actually written by a pirate and reads the abridge version to Billie.  

The film is going to be shot in two different locations - a beach in Kent and a bedroom in London. *Beach scene: Not much needed actually, apart from some action props. 

*Bedroom scene: A nautical, pirate themed bedroom. It has to reflect the personality of Billie

*Diorama sequence: These will be interspersed throughout the film. It will be seen through Billie's eyes (aka her imagination), and more specifically, through her makeshift telescope. Ideally, it should be something simple, beautiful, yet playful at the same time. (Refer to separate "Diorama Sequence" post under "Out To Sea" for more details) 

BEACH SCENE 

For Billie's Room, the producers/directors also mentioned that they wanted some sort of continuity between the room and the diorama sequence. They wanted something somewhat obvious, somewhat subtle at the same time, that would make viewers link the imaginary sequence to Billie's passion for pirates and thirst for adventure.

We tried to make correlations between the room and the imaginary sequence by incorporating similar elements and sticking to the same colour theme. One aspect that the director seem to be so adamant on incorporating in both scenes is the fabric. To do so, we decided to use the curtain from the room as one of the underwater backdrop in the diorama sequence. However, as we were dressing the set, the director told us that the curtain fabric we chose was too shiny and we had to replace it. This was tricky as we were already super tight on budget and normal curtains are often priced at £15 and above. In the end, we decided we were going to DIY it. As the top of the windows will not be in frame, we actually made our curtains out of a similar shade of blue fabric that we bought from a nearby independent dress shop. We overlap a small bit of the top fabric and sew it together to make it more sturdy, then we poked a big enough hole through it so that we could fit a shower curtain ring through it. Although we are no seamstress, you got to do what you got to do. #makeithappen 

Also, if you noticed, the same waves and pirate ships can both be found in the room and the imaginary sequence. Each shelve in the background is also carefully designed to fit the theme. The photographs loosely stuck against the back of the shelf, while at first glance seems like a normal regular pictures, are actually part of the location in which the outdoor beach scene is shot at. The intentional misalignment of them is because we wanted it to appear as if Billie took them and haphazardly stuck them on. Anybody can create a room which is aesthetically pleasing, but we wanted to create a space that propels the story forward and give a backstory to the characters in them, thus we tried making as many links as possible. 

I also did a detailed budget breakdown of the dressing list for this scene, with the items labelled in light blue as stuff that are borrowed and needed to be returned after. 

Oh, and something I learnt is that rather than searching each individual websites for the cheapest price, what you could do is go to google home page and simply type the product you are looking for. Then just below the search bar, there is the option to choose from "All, shopping, images, video, maps, more..etc" Click "shopping" and it will help you compare prices from the different sites. 

Also, a big shoutout to our lecturer, Anna, would help raided her son's stuff for additional pirate themed items that we could use. :) 

Here are some of the pictures before the set dress and after: