Shooting Day- Evaluation

The day of our shoot was an interesting one, it was stressful, but of course ended up being a lot of fun. We planned to set up the day before, however snowy weather conditions made this very difficult! Meaning that we had to get to the location very early to clear a pathway for the camera, so we wouldn't see footprints where the detectives walk. We then cleared out the container making it look more 'abandoned' covering up some of the clutter with a dusty cloth, giving a sense that it had been there a long time.

We also had to prepare the dead body, which included making it look like he had a knife through the back of his head. However this proved difficult as the equipment to stick it in the to him did not match the skin tone of our actor very well and did not look realistic at all, therefore we decided to use a joke knife that sat on top of his head and looked like it came through the other side, therefore we had to be very careful of our shot angle to make sure that this was not extremely obvious! We then had a makeup artist to put on scrapes and bruises and make him look ‘deader’.

One of the best things about shooting was the creation of many shots and ideas, as we realized we might not have enough shots to last for a whole two minutes.

·       We took the idea of flash backs from our original idea. This included a hand held tracking shot, showing the view of the killer as he walks up to the victim, all we see is the knife and hand in focus. The shot cuts out just before it goes into his head, as obviously we couldn’t actually put knife through someone’s head! However we did consider having a sound effect of this in a black out whilst we see a credit. We all took turns of using a hand held camera to give lots of options of which one to use when editing and for personal experience. This was one of the more difficult parts of the day and it took a long time. However once edited into black and white, sped up and possibly slightly blurry it will shock the audience, a key expectation of a Thriller.

·       Another creation was the mark that the killer leaves which is the handprint in blood on the wall. Originally we were going to have a smiley face, but we thought this would be an obviously thing to do. This lead to other shots such as a close up of the killer swiping some blood up with his hand then rubbing it into his fingers.

·       We also didn’t think our ending was dramatic enough. So somehow, inspired by the idea of leaving a mark, we came up with the idea of leaving a note in the victim’s mouth sealed in by the gaffer tape. The note was very random and was taken from the title of an old song- Bring on the dancing horses. As peculiar as it seems we recognized that it would leave questions and suspense, which is what we aim for in opening sequences. This idea also left room for more shots, such as a tracking shot of it being pulled out of his mouth and being opened. Another suspense idea was that the chief detective already knew what the note said, suggesting that he had some sort of history with this killer, giving an idea of what the rest of the film would be about.

From the beginning of the shoot we decided that we would alternate the roles of director, camera and sound, and we would all watch for continuity, leaving less room for errors. However towards the end it seemed due to the distraction of the snowy conditions and the friendly cast, I felt I took on all of those roles at one point. But after understanding that time was passing quickly, they regained focus, and we managed to get some great shots in the car.

On the topic of the car, we originally had planned to film the car coming up the hill as our start to the sequence. However as we were using an older rusty looking car, the hill was too steep to get up in the snow and it kept getting stuck and sliding down. So we ended up getting in the back seat of the car and filming then arriving and getting out.

Over all I felt that we did work well as a team as we did manage to get all the shots we needed, and i look forward to editing the car scene and the flash backs. and also choosing some music to add even more suspense.