Account of The Shoot Day

Our shoot day started at about 11am. Our group had the script although it was only a small dialogue between the character and the caller and we opened the shot timeline on Talia’s phone. Our story board did not exactly match the original but we managed to adapt such as we cancelled the third call from the study and decided to make it in the kitchen before she was killed. Other than this nothing else was changed.

To begin, we started filming in the study. In this scene we have the young girl sitting on the computer browsing through Facebook when a pop up appears. We filmed from all different angles, wide medium and close in order to capture intricate detail and emotion. We had to do this quite a few times because sometimes the lens was blurry or there was bad lighting that ruined the clip. Once we were sure that the clips we got were good we moved on to the phone call. We did a close up shot of the phone ringing to show that this was the most important part of the scene. This was followed by a pre –recorded clip of my teacher doing a deep voice saying the famous line from our movie like in Scream “You shouldn't have done that”.

Once this first scene was over we moved on to the second scene. In this scene we filmed her moving from the study into the kitchen where she meets her death. We filmed from behind her walking into the kitchen and then we filmed from the kitchen her walking in so we could see her emotion. We attempted to get our character, Rachel to hold the camera herself and film from her point of view however this did not work as the camera was unsteady.

In scene three we filmed the actual death of our character. We filmed the phone call using a wide shot followed by a close up to show her emotion which fear and vulnerability, which is how women are stereotypically represented in thrillers. We filmed outside however it was raining so the picture wasn't as clear however we used this to our advantage and gave the scene an eerie feeling with the sound of the rain dropping on the window. The scene inside where she dies due to poison we chose to do a close up to show her last moments and emotion.

My role in the group was mostly directing although we all equally had our share of filming. As the main director I was in charge of making sure that our character was always in the correct position at the right time and the shot matched the one on our timeline so that the day ran more smoothly. Talia and I worked on the make up, Charlie was unable to help in this area as he was unsure what to do so instead browsed through the clips and tried to distinguish any scenes that need redoing. This helped save time at the end. With Rachel’s make up we tried to make her seem tired and fearful by applying black eye shadow under her eyes to create ‘bags’. We also applied blue lipstick to show low body temperature, circulatory disorder and inadequate oxygen circulation. She is seen holding her neck as she is choking to death although the use of dramatic irony is used here, as the audience knows she was poisoned but she is unaware. Her body slowly falls to the floor when she is seen dead with her foaming from the mouth, to create a tense atmosphere.

Talia’s role in this group was mainly the filming and Charlie the main editor although we all contributed to all areas. We nominated ourselves for the area we were best at and the end result shows this. As a group from the beginning we have worked extremely well as a team, helping each other and discussing ideas. We met up on a few occasions to discuss what we were hoping the end result would look like and we were nearly perfect. I thoroughly enjoyed working with Talia and Charlie as well as filming the thriller.

My favourite part to film would be the death of our character where she falls and is seen foaming at the mouth. We used toothpaste here and had to film about 6 times before it was perfect, however it was enjoyable and exciting.