Account of shoot day

Account of shoot day

Our shoot went pretty smoothly over all. we tried to balance all the different roles and adapt our initial plan to compensate for new ideas for example the initial establishing shot of the interview room. We started shooting a little later than planned as we had to finalise the set ad get a few props, but we did plan how the set would look with our group so we had the general idea of what we wanted.

  

We filmed backwards to the story board as one of actors had to leave the set earlier then planned so we did all the shots the needed him in. we new exactly what we wanted are thriller to be like with the cramp environment of the interview room and we victimised the suspect through out. Our film is going to be a thriller as it has a crime theme our thriller will appeal to the audience as it’s is filmed from the girlfriends story not from the killers story which is a good USP.

  

We set up in a studio location as it made sense to be in a controllable environment with a level floor for tracking shots and a fairly sound proof location as a police interview room is fairly quite apart from the interview. We used props like a fairly old school tape recorder and a cheap laptop to help make the interview room look more real we also made our own props like the crime scene photos which had to be photo shopped to take out things like dates, and a police report for the interviewer to have to make him look more real, we dressed the girlfriend up in school uniform and it was meant to look like a boarding school uniform as high school massacre  often happen in casual clothed schools so we decide to make ours look different we also used a blond girl where as a stereotypically a high school massacre suspect wouldn’t have a girlfriend or she would be an “emo” with dark hair and lots of piercing.

  

Our shot choices we tried to victimise the suspect by shooting her from high angles and when doing over the shoulder shoots we left in lots of the detective’s body to try and make her seem less powerful. We used a genie lift for our opening shot which really gave a sense of entrapment in the interview room. We initially didn’t plan on using the lift but we decided to on the day and it turned out really good it really added to the film, if I could change something I would have put blood on Alex’s shirt when he enters the interview room to really re enforce that he was the killer, this would help make the flash backs look better.

We dressed Seb who plays the killer in a school uniform with a slipknot T shirt underneath to denote that his dark side is trying to escape from under his innocence which was the white school shirt. The suspect in the interview room the killer’s girlfriend, was dressed in high school uniform from a boarding school which is a move away from the standard columbine non uniform.

Our original police interviewer was un available to make the shoot so we had top use another actor it was important to make sure they looked old enough to be a police detective so it wouldn’t look like something from buggies Malone, we choose the interviewee to be blond and good looking not a stereotypical emo alternative chick to move away from the high school shooter stereotype.

We used the studio lighting in the roof to light our set we also used a screen to reflect light onto the interviewers face to keep good continuity throughout our shots. We also used a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling to make the interview room seem dingy and old-fashioned. In the you tube confession we used a light string to make it look like a screen burn on his face to make it look he used a webcam to film the confession on. We made the light really bright to make it look like a computer screen glare, it was much brighter than a real screen. The bare hanging light bulb added to the interview room feel also with the really long wire it was on really gave the crane shoot an entrapped feel. I really liked the way the single bulb and the light string turned out.

We had the sound of the tape recorder been turned on we made sure we recorded this as it made the interview room scene seem more real and it’s quite a distinctive click. It created the suspense as it was just before she started to tell the story of what happened during the day.

My role in the production was mostly sound, holding the boom and noting down the shots list, I also Had to make sure the boom wasn’t in shot and made, I decided on the uniform that the actors should where the school shirts and a few other props were provided by me, also took on the role of filming some scenes like the extreme close ups on the girl I also helped with the white balancing of the camera in the different location.

We made sure we divided up our tasks evenly in preparation for the shoot and on the shoot day we managed to balance everything giving all of our group members stuff to do and get in all done, we made quite good preparation to the shoot and had planned what we were doing so this made the shoot day easier as we had planned well and new what shots and location we needed.