Account of shoot day

On the day of our shoot we had to begin by completing our set, which probably set us back a little while to begin with. However, we found our feet straight away and were very organized in our thoughts of how we wanted each shot to look and what we wanted to shoot when. As our thriller is a thematic title sequence, we didn’t need to have a huge set with a lot of detail, but we decided to create a room, which enabled us to have a background setting which was sufficient in creating a home like feel. We also thought about basic key things that we would find in a living room, like a sofa, TV, coffee table, which, again, would create the image of a living room for the audience.

We decided that our target audience would be adults, who would be able to appreciate the artistic effect of our opening sequence, as it may not be something that children would be able to understand or connect with.  We initially thought we would finish quite quickly as we hadn’t go any cast members to worry about. However, this was a preconception and it actually took a very long time as ours was thematic and required a lot of close ups which took time in planning as we had to make sure the lighting and set was consistent throughout.

As we followed the thematic route, we were able to set up and shoot in the studio. By shooting in the studio we were at an advantage as we were able to control things like the weather and the lights to keep it at the same time of day/night. The studio environment also enabled us to have nice tracking shots, avoiding uneven ground and arising problems. Our background set, we decided to put them as brick walls because we thought that it was a realistic setting for a home living room, as we could decorate the walls, to establish a more homely feel. For our thematic title sequence we used panning shots which demonstrated the idea of askew perspectives. All of our shots were close-up shots of particular things. This was because it worked best for our thematic sequence, allowing us to demonstrate the idea of perspectives clearly to the audience. We followed our storyboard very closely using our original ideas, which worked well. We could have improved our film however, by adding more material ie, more shots, but on reflection of the shots we came to an agreement that we had enough material to create a moving and dramatic opening sequence.

On the day of the shoot we were all very organised but we did have to do a bit of running around, borrowing bits of items for our set, like paintings for the walls etc. just to make it more realistic.  However, by the time shooting had begun we were all silently confident, as we knew all the different shot types we wanted and the disjointed, arty effect that we were going for and the pieces that would be improved in post editing.  

Our sequence was heavily prop based, with things like the fruit going from good to bad, portrayed through a wine bottle. We had many ideas with using contrasting props which allowed us to see the change from good to bad, which is what our sequence is based on. Another prop we discussed using was flowers, showing some living and then some dead. However, we came to the conclusion that showing live and dead flowers would be too complex and time consuming, but we still used the same concept for the fruit which worked well as it showed a good demonstration of the perceptions between good and not so good.