Shooting On Location
Sunday 6th March 2011
Present at Shoot: Myself, Josh, Holly and Sam
On this day we shot the majority of the internal sections of our film at my house. We started with the bedroom shots and filmed those in succession, reshooting when necessary. Initially, we encountered some problems with lighting and positioning within the bedroom. Obviously we needed to see Sophie (our actress) on the sofa, but we also needed the desk in shot with the phone visible on top so it was clear what the vibrating noises were and where they were coming from. Eventually we positioned the camera correctly and managed to get the rest of the shots in one or two takes each. Another problem we encountered was lighting. We decided to keep the lighting completely natural for this scene in order to enhance the realism. During the scene were Sophie picks up the phone it appears as though it is a lot darker but this is due to the light coming in from the blinds behind her. In a way, this was advantageous for us since we wanted to keep her face completely hidden and the light did this for us. We may try and enhance the shot slightly in during post-production, but we shall see how the film looks during editing.
Following the bedroom shots we filmed the in the hallway and bathroom. There was only one transition shot in the hallway, so this was relatively easy and we completed it in only a few takes. In the bathroom, however, we started to encounter problems. One issue was the amount of space available to us. In order to get the shots Holly and myself had to stand in the bath. This led to a few problems with the tripod, but we soon fixed it. Another problem was with the panning as Sophie enters the bathroom; Holly was having some difficulty keeping it smooth and moving it in time with Sophie whilst keeping her movement looking natural. Again, this was down to the confined space we were working in, but Holly eventually managed to get a perfect shot and the rest of the scene was easy (when we remembered to check that the camera wasn't visible in the mirror!).
Following this we quickly filmed the external shot of my house as well as the knife block, mirror, notebook and phone shots. These were very simple, required little setting up and were all done in one take.
Wednesday 9th March 2011
Present at Shoot: Myself, Josh, Holly and Sam
We spent two hours of our lesson time filming the internal scene against the black curtain. We encountered a lot of issues on this day. Firstly, the room we initially wanted to film in had been double-booked so we had to move to another location and re-plan our lighting. We filmed in the lecture theatre at school on stage, which was advantageous to use due to the black curtains. After some confusion and many adjustments we got the lighting perfect and were ready to shoot, and that's when inspiration struck. We decided to have Sophie 'performing' in front of an empty theatre during the scream at the end of the shot, enhancing the fact that she was slowly slipping into madness and starting to loose her mind. This also worked well a with the graphic match we wanted to do in the next scene. Aside from the lighting issues, we only encountered one with the dolly, and that was tracking backwards at the correct pace whilst the curtains opened. Once we'd cracked it though, we decided to try it again and Holly and myself made the camera shake. We did this as we wanted the audience to really feel as though the scream was shaking them to their very core and wanted to portray how loud and powerful the scream truly was.
Monday 21st March 2011
Present at Shoot: Myself, Josh and Holly. (Sam, unfortunately, was unable to attend due to unforeseen circumstances)
This was our final day of shooting and all we needed to film were the external shots involving the car and the desolate stretch of road during the evening. We encountered two main problems when filming these shots. Firstly, the traffic coming along the road was out of our control, which resulted in us having to re-shoot many of the shots. We also encountered concerned members of the public asking if our actress was okay, since she was wearing a dress and heels and chasing after the car. Aside from this, there were no problems at all and we even managed to film some of the shots in a single take!
