Account Of Shoot Day

We filmed our thriller on Wednesday afternoon and Thursday because we needed to get the photos of the man in the room with the girl that the photographer was taking pictures of because the photos needed to be taken in the dark, and we needed the photos by Thursday morning to be able to film that clip.

Our Wednesday afternoon shoot began at 3 when we had to go and get costumes and props to take up to the room where we were filming. We set the room up making it look like a 1950’s room (based around the 1950s.) We got our characters into costume and told them what they had to do for the shot. We went outside and watched them rehearse from the window. Then we started filming. Izzy was on the camera filming at one end of the car park, Charlotte was taking pictures for us to print off, Molly was shouting action to me and I shouted action to the cast. I also told them what they needed to improve each time. It was getting darker as we filmed which was good; the photos were supposed to be taken at night by the photographer who was on a mission to follow this person. We didn’t change anything on our storyboards when filming; it looked good and there wasn’t anything we could improve. We prepared well for this task, although we did encounter problems with casting – something we solved at a later stage. We struggled with this, as we needed someone that looked older than us, who was also a good actor. The other shot we wanted to complete was filming the photographer taking pictures of the characters in the room. However we didn’t do this; it got too dark. Therefore we filmed it on the Thursday after the other shots were finished, meaning the lighting would be dark. Overall, our Wednesday shoot went very well. We checked that the set was how we wanted it taking some of the props in to prepare us for Thursday’s shoot.

On Thursday, we had the whole day to complete the shots, needed to produce our opening title sequence. The shots needed were filmed in the studio, which we checked on Wednesday afternoon. It took a long time to set up the props due to the lamppost not working meaning we had to fix it. We had to staple the brick wall onto the backboards making it look like he was outside by a brick wall. We then pushed the boards out a bit, so that it looked like there was an alleyway and that the messenger was walking through the alleyway. We got some leaves to put on the floor so that it looked like he was meeting someone under a lamppost in the dark outside. We then got our characters into costumes. We had Tom Gass, a fellow student, as the messenger and we had Guy, a teacher, playing the detective. Filming the shot from high up we used a crane machine and by pressing a button it would move down to the floor. We also used a smoke machine to imitate a film noir and a fan, to create a windy effect. Izzy and Charlotte looked at the screen to check that the light wasn’t too dark. Molly pressed the smoke machine and I was on fan duty. I had to keep turning the fan on and off, so that the smoke wasn’t blown away but enough to make it look windy. We each filmed a bit from different angles. After filming this from different angles, we tidied up and set up for the second shot. We were shooting a man sitting at a desk looking at the photos we had taken on the Wednesday. We painted the backboards pink, put a carpet down, decorated the room and put a picture on the wall. We put a desk with the photos on so that the man could look through them. We checked that we had got everything in place and started to lay out the tracks to do a tracking shot. It took a while to get the tracks in line. Molly sat on the vehicle with the camera to guide it. Izzy moved it along the tracks, Charlotte checked it wasn’t to dark or light and I held the wire to check that the vehicle didn’t run over it. We let our actor practise what he had to do for a while and Izzy and Molly had to practise pulling the vehicle along and getting the movement gentle. We filmed the tracking shot a few times to enable us to have back up. After we had done this we had finished in the studio. We helped clear up the set so that it was tidy for the next shoot. We had one more shot to film, which was the shot we didn’t manage to get on the Wednesday. We had to get the lighting right so that it matched the lighting in the pictures from the previous day. We took all the camera equipment up to the car park and did the shoot. We started by looking at the landscape and then slowly moved round to film the photographer hiding in the tree. We also wanted to get a shot of what the photographer was taking a picture of in the lens of the camera. We got this idea from a clip in the film China Town. After we had shot this we decided we had filmed all the clips that we needed. Overall, I think the shoot went really well.

One of the shots we filmed that I think went particularly well was when the detective was smoking before he got given the letter, the fan blew the leaves slightly like it was windy and as he dropped the cigarette on the floor some sparks flew off. This made the shot look very effective.

Costumes and props was probably the hardest thing as they had to be in 1950s. The girl in the bedroom was wearing a 1950s dress and she already had 1950s glasses, which worked well. We chose this to wear as we thought it made her look very innocent, making it harder for the audience to work out that she was about to hit the man over the head. The man in the room was already wearing 1950s clothes. He wore black trousers, a collared shirt and a sleeveless jacket. We chose this as we thought it would make it look more mysterious if he was dressed smartly in a room with a girl. The photographer wore a suit with a long brown coat and a hat. We chose this for the photographer because then he was disguised when hiding in the tree, but also he looked smarter if anything else were to happen. The messenger we dressed in quite poor clothes. He wore trousers, a trilby hat, a trench coat, shoes and a tie. We chose this because we thought the messenger should look quite poor. The last character was an ambiguous man who was looking through the photos. We had him wearing all black because we didn’t want him to be seen, keeping him disguised. He wore long black gloves, a long black coat and a trilby hat. We had to have all the props in 1950s style. We used a 1950s gun, camera, cigarette, envelope, desk etc.

We chose 5 actors for our opening title sequence. Tom Gass who was our messenger (chosen because he is a good actor, he looks older than he is and we thought he looked quite secretive.) Daniela Wilde as the girl in the room (she is a good actor, she looks older than she is and she is in AS.) Stephen Paxton as the man in the room (it would look more mysterious if there was an older man and a woman in the room as the audience wouldn’t know what they were talking about or why she hit him thus presuming a lot of different things.) Guy was our photographer; (a good actor and looked good in a hat.) We chose Phil Ward as the man in black because he embodies the 1950s making him perfect for the character.

We only used a few lights e.g. spotlights to get to the right intensity of darkness as most of it was set at night. I think this looked good as it made it look scarier. We are also going to put it into black and white like a film noir; therefore we didn’t have to worry about light too much.

We decided that we were going to put sound in at the editing stage; therefore we didn’t have to worry about sound at the filming stage. We also had no dialogue therefore it didn’t matter what was being said. At the editing stage we are going to add sounds such as sirens.

In this thriller piece we all had different roles during different shots. I started by doing the fan. Then I had a chance to film some close up shots of Tom Gass and Guy. This went really well as I remembered everything I had to do to set up the camera. I also had to shout action and I held the wire collecting it up when we were doing the tracking shot. I think these were all very important jobs and I did them to the best of my ability.

I think we worked well as a team and we all did a lot during our shoot day. We all played multiple roles discussing ideas, what we thought should be changed and what would look good.

We were worried leading up to the day but once we started filming we were a lot happier and thought it went very well. One problem we had was that when we took the pictures on the Wednesday afternoon the pictures were darker than when we filmed the photographer taking the pictures on the Thursday. We were a bit worried about this but it is something we are going to sort out in the editing process.

I think shooting on location and in the studio was good as we had contrasts of where the shoot was taking place. It took place on the school grounds, which was useful as we had everything there. In the studio the scenery was good which made it look real. Overall I think that shooting in both places worked well and has worked in our film.

Overall I think our shoot went a lot better then we thought and we were very pleased at the end.