Our day began at 9 when we went into the studio to check
what props we had already collected for our shoot. Already the day before we
had been around the school a bit looking for perfect props and had managed to
collect some old looking books from the library, old ornaments from the office
and collected the costumes for our actors. So our morning consisted of
collecting more things we could use such as a coat hanger, cabinet, plants.
Once the set was up we had to paint it, this took some time and then delayed
furnishing the set because we had to wait for the paint to dry. This made
things complicated because it meant that our whole shooting schedule would be
behind so we decided to cut out our secretary because we were not sure that if
we filmed her we would be able get in all our shots with our two main actors.
For the start of our thriller we added in an extra tracking
shot of our detective walking down the street and whilst we were filming this
we realized that it would be perfect to have most of our title’s coming down at
the same time. While filming our thriller we had many close ups because most of
the actions our actor was making mattered to the story that we were trying to
convey and all of them basically came out the way we wanted them too. At the
end as well we put in a tracking shot because we decided that the title of the
film would be what the detective wrote on the paper and we thought that a
tracking shot would nicely combine the last scene to our title scene.
Surprisingly the props that we wanted to use were easier
than we thought to find around the school. We thought that it would be hard
because of our old-fashioned noir theme but we quite easily found a typewriter,
an old phone and old fashioned looking ornaments. Basically from looking at old
noire detective films such as L.A. Confidential and images from Google we were
able to base our detectives look of that. Our actor had the exact clothes that
we wanted so he ended up wearing his own and all we got for him extra was the
classic detective style hats. With our leading lady we struggled a bit because
we only got the clothes last minute and they were not exactly what we pictured.
Our last resort was once again asking her if she had any suitable clothes. She
came back with a Prada coat and a loose fitting dress which was exactly what we
had pictured.
The reason we chose our male lead was because basically we
were looking for someone who had the ideal look for a detective from the 1940’s
therefor we chose Stephen. After this he sent us a mug shot, which had been
artistically edited and seemed to put him in the role of which we wanted. To be
honest he wasn’t the best actor but he still did a great job in the part and we
could tell he was trying his best. We chose Dayana to be our leading lady
because she seems to have a very hard and cold exterior, which suited our main
role perfectly, as well as her looking older and having the timeless beauty
that we wanted. We were hoping when we cast Dayana that her coldness would come
across when we were filming but on the day this dint seem to happen. Although
since her part wasn’t very big I don’t think it mattered very much.
The only lights we used throughout the shoot were redheads,
which we placed above the set and looked down. We also had one behind the
shutters because we wanted to give the effect of a street lamp’s light faintly
coming through the window so it would of created a nice effect with the blind
of the light coming through. When Stephen was sitting at the desk there wasn’t
enough light coming onto his face so we used redheads then aimed them at a
reflector so there was enough light coming onto his face but looked like it was
just from the lamp that we used as one of our props.
When we were creating the storyboard for our thriller we
really never considered sound although I think that when we started filming we
really started to realize how important it actually was. I am not sure if at
the end we are actually going to use the sounds that we got from the set or
just place music over the top. In the end the sounds such as him typing on the
typewriter, dialling and hanging up the phone were great for our thriller in
order to create the senses of a little bit of panic and suspense as our
audience will be waiting for something to happen.
Throughout the whole shoot everyone kept swapping roles.
Before the shoot I helped arrange all the props and put them into place. My
first role during our shoot was the lights. We were trying to sync the time
when Stephen turned his light on to me turning on the redhead that would light
up his face. It was difficult to try and get them to go on at the same time so
in the end I stood next to the main socket and waited for the director to shout
lights which both matched them up perfectly. Secondly I was directing which
involved choosing where some of the shots went and the duration of time they
were held for. After this I did the actual filming which I think was my favourite
part because it was the role in which you got to do the most. My last role of
the day was the one I thought was also the most tiring. I had to hold the mic
over my head aiming at the actors in order to capture all of the sound. I think
this was the one I enjoyed the least because it felt like I was doing it the
longest out of all of the past jobs that day and by the end I was really
starting to get tired.
No comments:
Post a Comment