Myself and Oscar recently filmed again as we needed more footage, due to the fact that several actors and the location has changed we have decided to re-shoot the whole opening sequence.
Unfortunately it could only be myself and Oscar that could film this day as Charlee was away on the only day that we could film; Bethany was supposed to be coming however we waited for her but she didn't turn up. This made it a lot harder for us to film as she was supposed to be bringing the props so we had to improvise and luckily I had brought some props of my own.
We filmed in a living room with the protagonist on the sofa watching TV and a child on the floor playing with a dog, we filmed at a few different angles to see which ones we would need to use; we then filmed from the kitchen; the protagonist walking from the living room, through the kitchen. This also included a zoom into an open bible on a page about sacrifice. Oscar did most of the filming whilst I decided which angles to film at and what the actors would do; we did refer back to the storyboard however because the location changed some of the shots and the camera angles had to change as well.
As we decided that we weren't going to use the Polaroids anymore because the images and the names are blurry and it didn't really make sense, it meant that there would be more footage needed as there was now more time to film. We filmed a lot more in the garage and there was a lot more dialogue involved this time, whereas last time we had more footage of the protagonist walking towards the garage. If we were to film again I would change this so that we filmed more of the protagonist moving towards the garage so that it would build more suspense and didn't get straight into the action.
Problems during filming:
We had a few problems with continuity during filming, the scene where the protagonist walks from the kitchen towards the garage was very hard to film as there's actually another large room in the middle, with a completely different door so we weren't able to make it look like this room wasn't there. This is something which I'm worried about when it comes to editing because I'm not sure if it's possible for us to make it look like this room doesn't exist.
I think that overall this filming session went a lot better than it did last time; I think it's really good that we now have an interaction between the father and son, and that we now show the protagonists face.
Set in the garage
Filming in the kitchen
After we showed Mr Ford our first draft we realised that there were a lot of things which we needed to change. We decided to change the scene where Lucy is speaking to the protagonist as we realised it wasn't very realistic and there was too much swearing. I looked at films which had similar scenes to this, a person waking up from being kidnapped and then speaking to someone else; I watched the film Saw which gave me an idea of what we needed to write for Lucy to say; we decided that she needed to act more scared. As well as this we have decided to add some violence to this scene and have the protagonist kicking Lucy and maybe throwing something at her, i think that this will make the film more scary and realistic, adding to the horror element. In our first draft we filmed the protagonists body and didn't show his face, we decided that this didn't really work so his face will now be shown and there will be an intereaction between the father and son.
We have also had to change the location to a different house as the previous house we filmed at is now unavailable, this means that we wont have the scene with the protagnist walking down the stairs; as well as this we have had to change the actor who plays the protagonist as he's unavailable to film any longer; however we have chosen a similar looking actor. Additionally we have had to change two other actors, the dead man laying on the floor, and the child. The child will now be played by a young boy and there will be an interaction between him and the father as well as some dialogue from the child.
This is one of the scenes which I looked at to see how we can change the scene where Lucy makes up and make it more realistic. From watching this scene from 'Saw' I've learned that it's a slow process and we should take more time having her actually wake up before she speaks. I've also realised that the victim needs to panic and not really speak much in the beginning before asking the questions.
We showed our footage which we filmed at the weekend to Mr Ford and he said that we could use most of it in our final film, however there were some parts which he thought we should re shoot. The main part which we need to re shoot is there scene where the woman being tortured has just woken up and speaks to the man. We all agreed that the dialouge needed to be changed as it wasn't really what would be said in a conventional thriller/horror film. We've decided that Charlee and I will go back and look at some horror thrilelrs which are similar to ours, particularly scenes where somebody has just woken up after being kidnapped, so that we can get ideas from this and then write a new script.
At the moment this is the only part which we need to re film, however we may also need to re shoot the whole scene showing the people who have been tortured as the setting will change and so will the actors makeup. Therefore we may need to film this whole scene again so that the continuity is similar.
Today we filmed, myself, Charlee and Oscar were there but Bethany couldn't come so we had to make do without her. When we arrived we planned where we would film and what we needed to change or move in the rooms. We decided to use the garage as the torture room so we covered up anything which wouldn't look right in the film up with white sheets. We filmed the living room scene in a room upstairs, which the stairs then led down to where the garage was, this was the closest we could get to how the film was originally going to be.
One of our actresses Lucy does art and helped us doing the actors makeup, she did hers and Jonny's fake blood and cuts.
The first scene we filmed was the scene with the protagonist sitting in the living room with his daughter playing; this was quite easy to film as we had the storyboard with us so we knew exactly what we needed to film. After a few times film,ing this we got the shot which we needed, we then went on to filming the child playing which we decided to use a low angle shot which then tilted up; this was quite hard to film as we didn't have the equpitment to do the pan with so I'm not sure if this shot will actually work or not.
For the second part of filming we had to have a few shots of theprotagonist walking down the stairs; these stairs were different to the ones in our storyboard and they weren't straight which meant that we had to do a few different shots of him walking down, some filmed at high angle and some filmed at low angles; I think this scene was good as awe included a variety of different shots. We didn't come acorss any problems whilst filming this, apart from the lighting when he stood by the door as it was quite dark at points and the lighting did change. Oscar filmed the majority of the film whilst myself and Charlee decided some of the places to film, which angles we should use that were different to those on the storyboard. Itw as really useful having images of the storyboard with us whilst filming as it allowed us to check them every time we filmed and make sure that we were filming the correct parts and that each shot was different.
The last scene which we had to film was the torutre scene which we filmed in a garage which we had layed down white sheets splattered with blood on. The two actors, Lucy and Jonny were both positioned on the floor, Jonyn was layign down covered in blood, dead and Lucy was tied up to a shelf. This scene was quite hard to film as we decided not to show the protagonists face in the opening, which meant we had to use very clever angles, mainly either vbery high angles or very low.
Alsop in this scene we filmed out title sequecne which we had used polaroid pictures for; we had hand written titles written on polaroids placed on a table in the garage scene. Myself and Charlee don't think that we should use these shots as the names aren't written clearly and the images are blurry and hard to make out.
Overall I think that the filming went successfully as we managed to get all of the footage which we needed; I thinkt hat there are some parts which we will need to re-film, such as the
We will be filming the scene with the Priest giving the speech on Monday the 14th of January and we will be filming the rest of the film on Sunday the 27th of January.
Charlee, Oscar, Beth and I will all be there when we film the scene with the Priest.
Charlee, Oscar and myself will be filming the rest of the film as Beth is unable to attend.
Actors:
Protagonist: Giles Westgarth
Girl being tortured: Lucy Wise
Boy being tortured: Jonathan Morris
Child: Rachel Mockler
Priest: Oscar Bath
Location:
Originally we were supposed to be filming at Bethany's house, however for reasons which she hasn't explained we can't film at her house anymore which also meant that we couldn't use her brother as an actor in our film so this last week has been a challenge as we've basically had to change the whole location and find a new actor. Instead of filming at Beth's we will now be filming at one of our actors Giles' house, this will mean changing a few things in the film, some of the shots will have to change and the locations.
The child has now changed from a young boy to a young girl which will still work in the film and hasn't changed anything majorly.
