Shooting Our
Thriller
Yesterday we went out and shot our thriller. We
began by going through our opening sequence again with Matt to make sure he had
a clear idea of what was going on. As we did this, our actress and actor were
preparing themselves elsewhere and we had already prepped them on what they
would be doing in this thriller. While talking with Matt we came up with the
idea to replace the gun with the knife as we agreed this would make the scene
much more interesting as a knife has a lot more versatility. As the first 30
seconds or so revolve around the woman herself, we decided to shoot the parts
of Grace, the main character, in her car. She was doing normal things like
undoing her seatbelt, puling the handbrake. She then picked up the files and
looked at them before getting out the car. We also decided to add in the woman
putting lipstick on in the rear view mirror. We did this in an attempt to make
her seem more feminine and for the audience to not really think anything of
her, other than her being a normal business woman. This is for the audience to
establish an idea of the character being relatively weak and almost frail, this
is so that when the fight occurs, the typical roles of a man and a woman are
reversed so that Grace is the one with all the power in the situation, and Ollie
is left powerless, this results in the audience being shocked. After gaining
all the shots we wanted of Grace involving the car, we began to shoot Ollie. We
started with a shot of his hand pulling out the knife, as you can see Grace
walking away in the background. For this shot I tried a focus pool by beginning
the focus of the camera on Grace and then swiftly changing it to Ollie and the
knife as he stepped into the frame.
We then shot Ollie coming out
from behind a car and following behind Grace. He ran up behind her and put the
knife to her throat, at this point the two begin to fight. At first I was
anxious to film this area of the thriller as I knew filming a fight scene, when
the two aren’t actually fighting, can be very difficult. However, Matt told us
exactly what we had to do and made it easy for us to know how to film this sort
of scene. Matt told us that by putting the shutter up to 425 it makes the
fighting seem a lot more aggressive, harsher and more brutal. This was helpful
as of course, the actors weren’t actually hitting each other, and putting the
shutter up made it look as if they were. fight scene we put the shutter up to
425 as this makes the shots seem much more aggressive and everything seem to
have a quicker pace. To shoot the fight
scene we would jaunt the camera to one side as Ollie “stabbed” Grace, this was
helpful in making fake stab attempts appear a lot more violent than they
actually were. We then stopped filming in what seemed like the middle of a
fight scene to leave some mystery within the thriller, and then filmed a shot
at ground level, looking at Grace’s shoes walk towards the camera, and seeing Ollie
lying in the background, presumably dead. I think this ending added a lot of
mystery and made the woman seem a lot more interesting, and makes the audience
want to know more. The ending also makes it seem as if there is more to the
rest of the movie, which is crucial in the opening sequence to a thriller.
Overall I am very pleased
with the outcome and I think the filming day went well. I enjoyed using the
camera and the different settings and trying out a focus pool was really
interesting. I think the filming itself went really well and I am happy with
the range of shots we got as well as the quality of those shots. If I were to
do it again I would make sure I was fully prepared for the shoot rather than
having to make small alterations on the day, for example changing from a gun to
a knife and changing the ending to make it more interesting. However of course I
realize these things will always happen as you get a better understanding of
the sequence when actually filming it in comparison to when you are planning
it. Despite the not completely thorough planning, I think the filming went well
and I hope when I come to edit it I will be happy with the footage we have.
This photo shows Georgia on the camera and I am in control of the sound at this point, which was another thing I learnt while shooting.
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