On the day of our thriller, we went to school to pick up our equipment and collected our storyboard for the day we went to our location to meet our actors and started to set up our equipment and we talked about the changes we were going to make, we decided to take out the baby mobile and use toys to symbolise the fact the female character was a mum. We also replaced the face licking with a whisper and this ended up being more effective as it left the audience on a cliff-hanger. We took pictures of all the shots we needed to obtain from the cameras point of view and used them as a guideline. One of our actors didn’t show up so I had to step into the role of “mum” and we changed the character to babysitter to make it more realistic, however after filming the first shot our actor arrived and we re filmed using her as we felt it was more appropriate to our idea and the research we had done, we wanted this to be a thriller and leave the audience on edge I think it was effective that the audience see the policeman is not what he seems before the mum does as this gives the audience a clue and leaves them waiting, using a young mum would attract a younger audience and also the male gender we obtained this by making her costume slightly revealing and the fact that she is young makes her naïve.
We set up at our location of Cornhill Manor we used the kitchen as we wanted to create a homely feel making the mother more vulnerable we used props and placed things around to symbolise the children this meant we didn’t have to actually cast children in our thriller, the kitchen is quite upper class which would give the killer an incentive to kill her, there was a mirror so we used the reflection to create shots of the mother making tea with the reflection of the policeman rummaging through her drawers, we used close ups which worked well and created suspense these worked well as they drew attention to his actions such as him locking the door, and this would create tension for the audience certain things we found difficult was the reflection shots as we had to make sure the reflection didn’t show our camera or equipment also we had to make sure certain things stayed in the same place due to continuity such as a toy couldn’t move and the tea had to be at the same level in the cup every time. We also had to find a door for the first shot and we had to travel to several locations to fin the perfect one in the end we settled on the main door at Hurtwood House.
We chose a Mac coat for the policeman and used a badge to show his authority and give the mother a reason for letting him in, we needed to make sure he looked genuine but not to formal as it had to indicate at the end that he is not a real policeman. We chose a low-cut top for the mother tight jeans and heels to attract the male audience and also give off an impression of slight naivety and make her look vulnerable her style would also contribute to attracted a young audience as she is modern and in style, we got our inspiration from films such as “Scream” and “When a Stranger Calls” she had a white top to signify her innocence. Cathy Cannon our actress is the mother of a student at our school we chose her as we know she would play the part realistically and she also is young and attractive which is important for our target audience, we chose Simon Wood to be our policeman as we have seen him in a previous thriller called “The Driver” and we wanted the character to be similar we knew he would look the right age for our killer and be able to pull of a slightly creepy edge but still look like a normal professional policeman we wanted someone who had the ability to look slightly menacing to fit with our genre.
We used natural light and the light of the kitchen, if we could have changed it I would have liked it to have been darker outside but due to our shooting schedule it wasn’t possible. However the fact that it was daylight made it less suspicious and stepped away from the typical scenario, it created tension and suspense because of the risk the policeman took, it also meant the mother would be more likely to answer the door and created a more realistic setting. We didn’t use much sound but made sure to capture the knocking of the door to create tension and suspense for the audience, we also got the sound of the tap as the mother is washing the mugs and making the tea, other sounds we used was the sound of the drawers shutting and the key locking in the door all of these helped create an atmosphere and foreshadowed what was about to happen and we intend to add in sound when editing our film, however sometimes the awkward silences and dialogue creates a feeling of isolation and emphasises that it is just them in the house this could relate to thrillers such as When a Stranger Calls.
My role was varied as we all decided to try all different aspects I started off with using the microphone and making sure we captured all of the dialogue and sound this is important as quite a lot of the time the actors where far apart and the dialogue is important to our thriller. Next I took my turn in being director I liked this role I had to take responsibility for making sure the camera was rolling, the actors where in the right place in order to obtain the perfect shot. Next was Camera I was in charge of actually filming the shot I had to use techniques such as panning and zooms and this was one of the most important roles as we had to make sure each shot was perfect so we did each shot twice or even three times to makes sure we have lots of material to edit, We had to obtain specific shots such as high and low angles, over the shoulder shots and extreme closeups so that we had lots of material to edit with, we did a closeup of our actors hand sliding along the worktop to show his menacing persona and to signify the change between policeman and psychopath. We all helped out with the focusing of the camera and setting up the tripod so the camera was straight and even for each shot I feel all the roles were essential to the success on our shoot day.
We all worked together well on our shoot everyone helped in setting up and taking all their roles seriously, we all contributed ideas on the mise en scene we all took our individual ideas and put them together to make sure everything looked how we wanted it to moving furniture and setting up props, everyone helped the actors telling them what we wanted to achieve and we helped each other when filming by suggesting ways of getting each shot and focusing on the set to make sure everything looked the same. We needed all four of us to be doing each role perfectly otherwise the shots wouldn’t have been right, there were times where we all had to squish next to each other by the door in order to get the shot and not have our equipment in the mirror reflection, we made sure the lighting and the props fit with the atmosphere we wanted to create.
I think all in all our shoot day went very well and although we had to make a few changes and think on our feet due to time limitations and location problems and the fact that we nearly lost one of our actors all in all I think there’s not a lot I would change about the shoot and I think it worked really well and look forward to editing it to capture the suspense and tension we want to obtain, one thing I think we could have done better is come up with more abstract shots and taken more advantage of the kitchen whilst we had it.
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