Molly Owens A2 Media Studies

Due to some of the footage I have originally shot, I found it was unsuitable to be used for my trailer so I have decided to reshoot it. Also the original plot for my trailer has developed more which has caused me to change some elements of it. This was due to some of my original ideas proving difficult to portray through filming and editing, for example, the 'glowing' of the mysterious box had to be scrapped due to my experience with final cut and photoshop being too little to effectively portray this effect.

Fourth Day of Filming

This was my largest filming day as it involved my two actresses doing some scenes for me. I had to do multiple takes as they were doing it for the first time when I was filming. I also had to get on with filming quite quickly as I was relying on natural daylight for some locations of filming in the house so this limited their practise time. The first scene I filmed was the girls walking up and down the stairs, the natural lighting for this looked very effective to I chose not to add any extra lighting. I had to re-film this a few times to get timings correct, as well as the girls hearing me when I tell them to start as there were a few instances when one would hear me and the other wouldn’t, which led to some confusion. I then filmed Flick hiding the box, I asked her to look obviously suspicious as my trailer is intending to not reveal a lot of narrative so I am adding in very few, but obvious hints at my narrative. I then filmed the girls going into the place where Flick hid the box.  I decided to film this from a few different angles to make it look less staged when it comes to editing. After this I filmed Flick and Effy running off upstairs, this was my weakest piece of footage as they kept looking directly at the camera, so it doesn’t look too professional. Finally, I took a few atmospheric shots of slow zooming outside of the window and focus on nature to incorporate some verisimilitude into my trailer as I want it to seem somewhat realistic as this will make it scarier to the audience – I found this out from my market research. I also filmed their pet fish swimming around to test the camera focus but I feel this could be effective in my trailer somewhere, to again incorporate more verisimilitude.

Third day of filming

I had to re-film the majority of my blood splatter scenes as I didn’t make sure the camera’s auto focus was off for manual focus so all of the ‘splatters’ that I captured were out of focus. Another issue was the fake blood that I used as it appeared very luminous on camera and looked more orange than blue-red. It was also very thick and sticky so all of my ‘blood drawings’ looked unrealistic. What I did on my third day of filming to change this was to change the fake blood I was using, I replaced the shop bought fake blood with a mixture of food colouring, red drawing ink and black drawing ink. I combination of all of these looked very effective be weren’t thick enough to look completely realistic, hence why I used the black ink in an attempt to make it look thicker which I feel worked very well and with editing will improve further.

I originally planned to film my outdoor scenes on 25/10/15, but due to the weather I was not able to so I had to reschedule it for 8/11/15. I plan to film everything in the same day as the lighting will never be exactly the same and this will make the overall outcome of my trailer look unprofessional. If I do have to re-shoot I will have to re-shoot everything, so I hope everything goes well with my first outdoor shoot.

All of the filming that I did on 24/10/15 was done indoors so I didn't have to worry about the weather effecting the outcome of my footage as I was in a controlled environment. This is because I could alter the lighting in whatever way I wanted. I have no issues with the overall outcome of my footage however, the fake blood that I used came out looking very luminous and unnatural so I will have to alter this in my post-production stage by adding a filter to make it appear darker. Another issue I had with the blood itself is that I discovered that it is very staining to skin, despite its purpose is meant to be for make up. Because of this I will have to rethink using it on my actors as they are young and cannot have blood stains on their skin.

This lighting I chose to use for the filming that I did was very bright and unnatural looking. However, this was due to me wanting to capture every spec of blood clearly, I can also make it appear darker if I want to rather than making it brighter in the post-production stages. I do plan to re-shoot some of the footage in a darker, more naturally lit set as it will allow me to use both options when it comes to editing my trailer together.