Account of the shoot day

My group and I went to Cornhill (boarding house) to shoot as planned. We chose this particularly boarding house because it is one of the nicest boarding house and the rooms are much bigger compared to other houses like Hurtwood House. It is appealing for our shoot because it is perfect for our set as we wanted to have a feel of home-like, private house setting as the main character is at someone’s house. During the journey to he house, we explained the idea and how we want to shoot to the actor first. So that he understood what he needed to do and how we wanted him to be.

As soon as we have arrived, we set up the tripod, camera and lighting set. We also ensure that we brought our props; black suit, black trouser, black tie, pale yellow colour shirt and a bottle of fake blood to the set. We were using at my team mates’ room, so they actually took down their posters of Megan Fox and others in order to make the room more realistic and fit into the plot of the story because the room is meant to look like a middle-aged married couple’s room. There weren’t any Queen sized room so we had to combine two small beds into one and then covered it with a big duvet to make it appear as a big double queen sized bed.

We did not shoot according to the storyboarding in a chronological order because we prioritise on the most crucial shots which was in the bedroom. Besides, most of the shots were mostly set at the bed room. Before we start shooting anything, we have the camera bubbled (have the bubble in the middle) and white balance. To ensure on what we are filming was a good quality shots, we zoomed an object to the max and then slowly turned to have it focus, then zoomed out. Finally, we started to shoot. We have this routine every time we shoot for anything.

We began to film over the shoulder shot of him opening the cupboard and taking nice suit out. While we did that, we have to say ‘cut’, ‘action’, ‘standby’, ‘rolling’ and this was usually done by the person who is taking in charge of the camera. As we took turn to shoot, we had to say them and it was actually fun as it placed you into role of a director’s position.  Once we finished it, we tried something different which was not listed on the storyboarding. We decided to shoot him doing the same thing from the closet ‘point of view’. So the lighting was slightly darker which helps to highlight the mystery thriller moment for the audience.

Straight after the first shoot, we have a shot of him putting the suit on the bed and started to wear them. This was the part we spent most time on as we had different angle shots of him doing the same time. So we had a shot of him from the side, from the front  and from a high angle and low angle point. When we shooting from the side, we had to be extra careful about what was on the background. For example, we weren’t aware of a dustbin at the background until we saw it on the screen. So we had to quickly remove that away and re-shoot that scene. It was lucky for us that we managed to recognise our mistake immediately. So it brought us into an awareness of how important it is to be concise what was in the background because little mistakes could cause the whole filming into ruin.

When it comes to filming the actor quickly putting his trouser to get dressed, we speed up the shutter speed to make the audience feel his urgency and his nervousness to escape before he gets caught. This is what we want the audience to feel as we want the audience to see this opening sequence from his point of view. When we have shutter speed to increase higher, we could see the effect of the moving image being quickened which we were very pleased about.

Another interesting filming technique which we learnt during our filming process was ‘zoom and focus’ trick. We have our actor kneel on a chair (he was too tall) to align with the gun on the table, this is to show what he was thinking. To show that, we just filmed the length between

his shoulder to his head, and the gun was not focused. As he turned towards the gun, we have the gun being focused. This was brilliant as it would create suspense for the audience.

To create further tension, we jerked the camera a little bit while we were shooting.

After shooting the bedroom scene, we went to the next location to shoot for the different scene. We had to use to a different bathroom because it was slightly bigger. We have the fake blood ready for the shoot. Before we start to shoot this scene, we tested the fake blood to see if it stained. We did this because we did not want to have the actor’s hand yellow after he washed his hand. We wanted his hand to be completely clean. This helped to show the contrast between his hands covered in blood and after her washed it.  To help save time, we did several tasks at the same time. While I was testing the fake blood, my teammates were setting up the camera and white balancing. The actor had to take his top off to make it more real and logistic. This scene was meant to be an earlier scene.

So we poured the blood on his hands and then started filming him opening the tap water to wash his hands and then his face. For this shot we did not use extra lighting as the toilet’s lighting was just perfect for the shoot. We had to film on the right side, we did this specifically because we did not want to have the toilet in the shot. After shooting it, we had a shot of just blood running in the sink. We had this shot zooming in because we want to specify the genre of our opening sequence ‘horror, thriller’. Also, red blood does help to accentuate the mood of shocking, terror in the audience.  So we were very pleased about those shots. After shooting it, our final shoot was to shoot a shot of a door handle turning slowly.

One final task we did before we finish packing was to record the sound of walking up and down the stairs. We might use the non-diegetic sound for the shot where we see him dressing up in a hurry.

Overall, we were very pleased with the shooting. It took us about 3 hours to complete the shooting. We were very efficient and worked together as a group as we aimed to produce a good quality in the thriller. The actor too was good at acting and very easy to work with. We had no problem at all with him as he did exactly what we told him to do and he perceived our idea, there present brilliantly in front of the camera. I am pretty sure he enjoyed filming with us especially when he had to take gun and put it at the back in his trouser. He looked cool and he felt cool too. It was great day.

Main Task shooting schedule       Locations                              Cast               Props and Costumes
21st Jan 2011
Friday - 9am - 1pm                      Cornhill boarding house       Jake Cecil      Gun,British Passport, smart                    
                                                                                                                        suit, black tie, bottle of fake                                                     
                                                                                                                        blood.