This was the big day!
We started by heading out to the location our director had scouted. On our first shot, we realised that as the camera and actors moved from the shadows to the sunlight, the change in lighting was too drastic. This made the shot logistically impossible. Eventually, we decided to move to an area with more consistent lighting. This was a good example of how a film crew can plan well ahead but also be flexible enough to make adjustments on the day.
The new shot was a combination of two shots in our original plan, which was now one long take. This is a trend I’ve noticed come up a few times in our exercises, and I think most of the time it’s arisen as a result of of convenience rather than motivated choice. I think this could be problematic, and I’d like to do more thinking into why a director would choose to use a long take over a few shorter shots.
After that shot, we moved inside. Once we got set up, we spent a while trying to get a shot right from one particular corner. After a few tries on this, I suggested that we move the camera and try doing it from somewhere else. I got this idea from my editing work – when the camera operator films the same shot 15 times trying to get it perfect, the editor can only ever use one of them (and they’re usually all about the same anyway). It’s better to get lots of shots from different positions, so the editor can take bits from each of them and have more wiggle room in their edit. Through doing this, the director might even find a shot they like much better than the one they had visualised in their head!
The last shot that we had planned was the reverse shot from the top of the stairs. We filmed this without too many problems.
At this point, we were ahead of schedule and the crew seemed to be more or less happy to finish up. But between us we still had some ideas for additional, more interesting shots. The first one was a high-angle shot from up in the staircase, which Isaac had found earlier while wandering around. The shot ended up looking really good.
After this, I took control of the camera to get some more options from outside. Firstly, I filmed the automatic doors opening – something different and interesting that could be easily cut to. Next, I got the actors to run through their movements from the start of the script a few times and filmed them from a few different angles. These included from behind them (the plan was to film them from in front), and from far away with a tree obscuring the shot. I thought this one looked really good, like a kind of surveillance camera. It fit the creepy tone of the piece. However, I was trailing behind the actors when I should have been ahead of them, anticipating their movements. This was just down to a lack of experience on my part, so it’s good to have that learning lesson now.
Finally, I got some establishing shots, because they weren’t too hard to shot and they could be a good way to start the scene. Again, just more for the editor to work with (as we were told to do in the exercise brief).
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