Thriller - write up of shoot day

When I woke up the day of the shoot I was feeling pretty confident in what we had created the day before. The set was painted and all props and costumes were ready to be collected. However, a member of my team Bella had not been around much the past couple of days and the morning was going to be her first time seeing everything. We had painted the set white, however there was discussion that white was not a suitable colour and black would have been more appropriate. So we used black cloth to cover the walls of the observation room.

Which you can see in the background of this picture of Darina, who is playing the policewoman.

Before the cast arrived all my group had to do was dress the rooms appropriately. Because at the beginning of the day we did feel that we needed more props to dress the room to make it look more believable. We had never really taken that  into consideration, but luckily we were able to get our hands on some desk props, thanks to media teacher Jason who kindly leant us a majority of his belongings. I thought that hanging the UV jacket on the wall was a nice touch to the room, because during the long shot of the observation room you could see its reflection in the window, which helped establish the location of the room. The microphone we were given did not fit right with the room. Luckily we were able to find an easy replacement, we used a butterfly microphone.

Butterfly microphone

This was definitely a better choice of prop, so I am really happy we found it. Set designer Tom was able to find us the metal lamp shade we were looking for. We used this prop for the investigation room, and it gave a really nice curved shadow on the walls, which you can roughly see in the picture of James and Pauli.

We started shooting after lunch, and I wish now that we had started earlier, so we did not have to feel so rushed. However, this would have meant we would have used different people to play the investigator and policewoman, so we could never have had the best of both worlds.

I felt the acting overall was really professional and I'm so pleased that we were able to have James as our investigator. I had written a script weeks before the shoot and I'd emailed it to the cast, however on the day during rehearsals the actors played around with some of the lines. Which is understandable because I do feel my script was a bit naïve.   

I am really happy with the costumes that were provided to us, the police uniform looked very professional and I was able to find a shirt to complete the outfit. My group was not able to provide James with a suit, but luckily he was able to wear one which he thought reflected his character. James also brought along a hat. He wore it on the shoot and it became a nice prop, as Pauli used it to provoke him during his lines. Bella brought an outfit for Pauli to wear and we were all really happy with it. The clothing choices were very 'teen grunge', which gave off a rebellious vibe.

On the day I did a majority of the camera work, which I found very challenging. There were some takes where we  wanted a clean pan that took a couple takes to get used to. I really enjoyed using the cameras and it was a great opportunity to learn new skills. Some of my favourite shots is the longshot through the observation window into the investigation room and the close-up of the microphone and recorder.  Closeups are an interesting way of directing the focus on particular objects, showing their importance. These shot were fairly easy to take and have a good impact on the film.We tried to take as many shots as possible so we could have a wide variety when we go to the editing suite.

Pauli rehearsing



I think editing the end parts of our opening sequence will be interesting because with the footage we have we could change the whole ending. I am not entirely confident with using the editing software, final cut pro, so hopefully I'll be able to get into the swing of things pretty quickly next week.



I would say that the shoot was successful and overall my group are happy with the footage we have. Even though at times there were disputes over certain decisions, this may have been because we were looking at the film from different perspectives.