Treatment

We are going to create a short documentary on the supernatural behaviour that takes place in the pub ‘The Old Queens Head’ Our target audience is quite wide, being people of pretty much any age (15+) who are interested in the supernatural. We decided to go with this idea as in response to our questionnaires/interviews, this was the one that received the most votes/was the most popular.

We will set our documentary in a pub called ‘The Old Queens Head’ which is in Sheffield. We got in touch with the pub owner and she gave us permission to go and film there. Filming will take place during daylight outside the pub for certain scenes where explaining is necessary. We will also be filming after closing time throughout the night to ensure that the right atmosphere is created (being when it is dark, therefore this is associated with more supernatural behaviour). Also our reactions will be more realistic to the creepy things going on, therefore parts of the script will be more random which is a quality we need in this type of documentary. Doing it after opening hours also means that the general public will not get in the way.

Our costumes need to be dark (preferably black), and the presenter maybe wearing a long black coat as the connotations of this are spooky and mysterious. The presenter will also need to be professional looking and smart, to give the impression that they are to be respected and knowledgeable, making them look more realistic and believable. The characters we will use are ourselves and a few friends as extras for the extra ‘reaction factor’.

To show reactions to any supernatural behaviour we will use many close ups on peoples faces. We will use a slightly low angle shot when filming the professional talking, to further give the impression that he is an important, knowledgeable and respectable person. At this point in the video (when showing the professional talking to an unprofessional) we will use a shot-reverse-shot. We will use a tripod to make sure we have a steady shot, making our video look more professional. We will also use a gorilla pod or car-camera-mount when filming tracking shots, to maintain a steady shot. Background noise will be ok when filming the daytime shots where the historian and presenter are talking about the history of the pub and the tracking shot of the presenter informing at the start. For the night scenes there should be little impropriate background noise as the pub will have no punters (being pretty isolated at that time), so the more quite the atmosphere is, the more scary the outcome and will also ensure that we can hear any poltergeist activity.

The pub’s diagetic world is already appropriate, as it meets the stereotype of somewhere that could possibly be haunted (old fashioned looking, bare, dark colours, etc), so there will be no alterations to the set needed. The only things adding to the diagetic world will be our props. These will be: An Ouija board and glass, torches, and cameras. We have taken many health and safety risks/potential dangers into consideration. Such as tripping over cables/wires and falling down/up stairs, especially as it will be dark and visibility will be limited. To prevent this we will have to make sure that all things that we can trip over are tucked neatly into the side and that we use torches (or some source of lighting) when moving around the pub.

The filming will take place on the 7th of November during the evening. We will then edit the documentary over the following few weeks.