Props

The sketchbook plays a big part of our film trailer as it is where Cassandra writes down all of her thoughts, fears and secrets. It is when this book is opened, that Cassandra’s spirit is disturbed.

As the first book we got was too new we decided to look for something more appropriate. We eventually found and bought an old jotter online that would have been used in the time period we were trying to replicate.

Rebecca and I drew pictures and wrote in the sketchbook bearing in mind what we wanted the audience to see of Cassandra’s personality. We drew London, war planes and Cassandra’s family to show how she was missing her home and to suggest to the audience that she is an evacuee from London. We also included drawings that displayed how depressed she was such as a picture of a hanging rope. In a particular bullying scene, we wanted a bully to rip a page of the sketchbook in half.

We decided that it would be effective for the picture of Cassandra’s family to be ripped to show her loneliness. To make sure it was ripped in the right place, we scored and folded the page in half so that it was ready.

In the scene when Scarlett discovers the sketchbook, we wanted to create the effect that the book hadn't been touched since she died. Rebecca found that wholemeal flour looked similar to dust and suggested we sprinkle it on top of the books to create this effect.

We used a fountain pen with a blue ink cartridge to draw in the sketch book as that is what people used to write with in the 40’s. At first, we were unsure whether people had access to different colours of ink at that time, but by further research we found that they did use both blue and black ink.

We went over the fountain pen drawings with black ink because we thought it looked more ominous in black.

We found some old school books for Cassandra in the school archive; these fit with the time period perfectly.

We bought fake blood to show the extent of Cassandra’s depression hint at the fact she started harming herself.