shooting day

Shooting Day.

The day began with a meeting with the crew and cast to decide whether we would go up to London and shoot our film in a flat or somewhere closer to school in one of the boarding houses.
We decided to go with the idea of one of the boarding houses as it did have the essentials we thought we needed, and it would save a lot of time as it wasn’t a long drive, which would enable us to have more time to shoot the film. However, when we got to our location we decided that the house looked more like a hotel and instead of having her set in a flat and running on our original idea we thought it would be more interesting if we did a chase scene through the corridors and ending with a fight scene. So, it wasn’t much like our original story board although the basis was taken from it. It was still a hacker trying to send vital information to someone and a hitman trying to kill her, but the way in which we shot it was that so it looked as if he was only seconds behind her and when shooting the Hitman we tilted the camera slightly to give a different perspective.

So when we decided on having a chase scene we went around the house to find good corridors that suited the purpose and see what different types of shots we could do so we had a good idea of what needed to be achieved. This chase scene we decided also took away from the unknowing of whether it was a horror or a thriller and made it unmistakably a thriller as it was full of action in the first two minutes and didn’t have anything stereotypically scary in it, such as been set at night. For most of our shots we used the camera handheld; this was beneficial as it gave more of a sense of a chase and things being chaotic because we wanted to create tension and drama that you associate with a thriller.

We didn’t need to set up much in our location and we only had basic props such as a gun, laptop and walkie talkie which all gave the impression of more of a thriller than a horror as they related more to action where as in a horror maybe a knife would be more appropriate. However, in the opening shot where the Hacker is sitting on the sofa she has papers which are covered in information about the wiki leaks, which related back to where we got our original idea and gave more of a sense of what the film was about and we wanted to make it contemporary to an audience and that people could easily relate to as it has been on the news recently. We used some tracking shots to show that she was being followed and some close ups to get her reaction of panic and stress in. However, in our fight scene we only used one shot (a wide handheld shot) which was effective as it gave the flowing movement of the fight and made it more realistic without having loads of cuts and different shots put in it.

Our casting choices were different from what we had originally planned, at first we thought it would be better to have a male hacker but as we progressed more into our thriller and came up with new ideas we thought that it would be less stereotypical to have a female hacker, and this idea came from the film ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ which takes away from the idea of women being less important than men. We had our hacker dressed all in black but still in everyday clothes, nothing out of the ordinary, firstly to make it seem that she was trying to blend in and also because it didn’t suit her character to be wearing something such as a balaclava. Our Hitman however, wore a suit which could be seen as stereotypical but was effective for what we were trying to show, that a girl who looks weak and innocent can kill a man who seems to know what her is doing and the suit showed that he was professional at his job. For the most part we used just the natural light in the location as we didn’t see any need to use lighting and it was more effective and naturalistic. However, when it got later during the day and the light had faded a bit, in order to keep continuity we used a light with a blue gel to create a similar light to the rest of the film.

   As far as sounds the hacker just had very heavy breathing and with both actors you could hear their heavy footsteps to show the intimacy of the chase. Also in the fight we added sounds to emphasise the Hitmans head being smacked on the desk and the loud sound of the gun. My role in the production of the film was coming with many of the ideas once we decided to change the idea of the shoot. The part where she sneaks into her room and tricks the Hitman to where she was, was my idea, although I did ask the rest of the team first. I also took part in lots of the filming, and making sure that the tripod was bubbled before filming.

Teamwork was vital to making sure that the filming was a success, before each new scene we decided which would be the best shot to use in order to make it as exciting as possible. We also discussed different ideas on how to cope with the new location and what would be the most appropriate course for the film to take. So when we decided on a large chase scene we all knew that we wanted the majority of it to be filmed handheld. We also changed roles at different points so we each had a chance at shooting in order to make sure that we were making the right choices shot wise. Overall, I was happy with the result of our filming day, even though we were unable to go up to London I think that it may have benefited our film for the overall result as it gave us a new idea that was more successful and also that fitted better into the thriller category as it was much more exciting.