On the 28th of January me and my group set out to film the opening sequence of our thriller, 'Elizabeth’s Diary'. The day began with the last minute planning of our group. The first thing we did was do gather together all of the props that would be needed and also our actress (Elizabeth). As a group we then went to the film studio where we had a look at the basic outline of the set, and decided what we thought would be the best way to set it up, to look as we had all imagined it. For the rest of the morning we were busy preparing everything to start shooting. This included doing all of the makeup, preparing all of the props, painting the set with blood and then setting up all of the props on the set. Once we had done this we then needed to visualize how we wanted the scene to look, and based on this, set up our tracks. I feel that although we hadn’t planned to spend any of the morning doing these things, this was incredibly useful, as the majority of our piece is fully dependent on the set to create the tension. However there was one area which was unorganized. We had only gone to get the props the day before, which left us only one night to prepare the props to suit the piece. If we had done this a week in advance, we may have even been able to set up some of the set the night before the shoot, allowing us more time on the day.
I feel that the strongest point of the day was the type of shot we used. The whole two minutes of our scene was one track, from one side of the room to the other side, where the hanging took place. This was a major risk that our group decided to take, which either could have been incredibly effective, or in a different circumstance, look a bit daft. This is the reason for why we had to spend the whole morning setting us the set, as every single specific detail had to be perfect in order to pull it off. Unfortunately though, I feel that there was one major disadvantage to this that was if the film didn’t look good in the editing sweet, then we didn’t have any back up shots to use.
We used the Film Studio as we thought that we would be able to set it up to look as much alike what we imagined Elizabeth’s den (where she hangs herself) to look like. The biggest advantage of using the film studio was that we could easily go and pick something up from around the school, if we thought that what we had was either ineffective or just not enough.
The most important things in our scene were the props we used. We decided to but loads of dolls and teddy bears etc and then make them look distraught. This was because we wanted to create an image of Elizabeth being a distressed, crazy and mentally sick child, who is obsessed with torture.
Originally we decided to choose Petrie as our actress. The reason for this is because she had a strong resemblance to the girl character out of the ring. However for the scene that we shot this ended up being quiet irrelevant as we rarely see the character of Elizabeth and when we do see her, it is either her reflection or her feet. If we were to continue filming the film further thought, we would need to use Petrie to act the character.
We decided to use a very simple style of lighting, to make the scene as naturalistic as possible. we used one white light above the set and then had a bulb lowered into the room, to creating the feeling of a room in her house. This was because the room used was later in the film discovered to be Elizabeth’s den. Fortunately this turned out to be very successful, and left our set feeling very much like we wanted it to. We had to use a strong light which shined through the door when Elizabeth opened it, to create her shadow and show the audience she had entered the room.
The final stage of our shooting day was to do the sounds. This took a very short amount of time as we just had to pick up the sound of footsteps, the noose, the door and her choking. This didn’t work very well though as it was incredibly hard to find an atmosphere that was completely silent. However this didn’t matter much as in the post production process of editing, we can look through all the sounds on the Mac and find the suitable ones from there.
On the day I was given the role of general helping. For example I was made to control the fans, help organize everything, help set up the set, give ques etc. The reason for this is because I am the producer, so in the pre production and post production process I am kept very busy. As a team on the day, and over the whole period we worked very effectively together, being one of the most organized groups and constantly developing new ideas, some of which worked and some of which didn’t. On the day we didn’t have one moment where we argued and we didn’t have one moment where we disagreed.
Overall I feel the shooting day went incredibly well. I feel the main reason for this was because we were all determined to make the day work and to work as a team to achieve our maximum potential. Unfortunately our footage didn’t resemble our storyboards in any way, but we did stick to our original idea and came out with some footage which has worked just as we wanted it too. Overall it was a great success.
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