Xx The shoot day xX

On the day of the shoot I was making last minute preparations for my shoot such as the Newton’s Balls, the metronome and the prosthetics needed for my gashed neck.
The equipment used on the shoot day, was:
· A Sony PD 170 Mini DV Cam
· Fluid head tripod (including a horse shoe) to keep the camera steady for good quality filming.
· Sennheiser (shot gun) Directional microphone.
· 2 x AA batteries.
· Suspension mount /unit
· Boompole + XLR Audio Lead
· Rycote Softie
· Mini DV Cam tape Stock
· Redhead Video Lights + tripod.

In addition to these, special effects like prosthetics were also used such as a prefab latex base, liquid latex and fake blood made from corn syrup used for the effect of creating gore and a burn, as well as the use of Newton’s balls and a metronome symbolising the passage of time. I felt the application of this went well, however if I was to do it again, I perhaps would have had less blood in one place and perhaps more on my face, I also would compress the surface area of the gash, to create a more realistic effect, as too much blood could look fake and unrealistic.

Before we began filming, I and my group looked up some past opening sequences that perhaps could be used for influence and inspiration such as Andromeda Strain, and War of The Worlds in which there is a zoom into the leave, the rain drop, DNA etc. This is the type of effect me and my group are trying to accomplish. However, when experimenting with after effects, another problem that occurred was the fact that we were using 2 and a half D shape, meaning that only zooms through the shapes could occur, we were unable to go around them as this would take away from the effect and quality of the thriller, as the 2D dymentrics would be discovered.













When we then went on to filming, we fulfilled the elements of the Newton’s balls shots, the metronome and me running away from a mysterious occurrence. However, certain aspects were changed on the shoot day, such as filming my running sequence outside, compared to the blur the background in editing, as we realised to film inside with a blue screen to project swirling images onto was too complicated on the day to produce. Another aspect that was changed was the shooting of the passage through the red blood cells; this was going to be created by using lamination paper that was going to be painted red, and therefore the passage was going to be the camera moving through. This changed on the shoot day, due to the lamination paper becoming inaccessible and therefore this shot will need to be created on after effects.

The shoot day, generally ran smoothly with little conflicts or stress, however this was due to only having the one shot of me running form the mysterious occurrence. The editing and adding of after effects is going to be the true challenge of this thriller. Before we filmed the real running sequence, we practised running with the camera and the different effects of me walking in comparison to my running. We also did this, in order to experiment with the HD camera, to see what problems may occur for filming our shoot. One main realisation made by our group was, when I was to walk the sequence through the hand held camera was easy to use as a person moved along side me with the camera. Having said this when it came to running, this become more difficult as, as the actor, I had to make sure I wasn’t running too fast in order to not loose myself on camera. This took time, to find the right speed for both me and the camera person. Another issue that arose during filming was the steadiness of the camera as well as the difficultness for unnig backwards withg the camera as the it had to be kept focused and one levelled whilst running backwards. With pracitse this imporved and soon was not a big issue. Having said this, when editing we found this came to our advantage as the distortion of the camera added to the effect of uneasiness and therefore created deformation on screen and a sense of thriller for the audience.















This meant that when it came time to filming it was done quickly and efficiently which was vital as we filmed late in the evening and therefore we were loosing a lot of lighting. As a result only 4 shots were taken and we chose the best of the four.
I feel we had a lot of time just sitting around and waiting, during this time I feel perhaps a start on after effects should have been made so that, not only did we have real filming to edit with but also some captions from photo shop and after effects. This would have made the process of editing a lot quicker for the future, when time will be scarce and therefore stress occurs at a later stage.