Thursday 29th January - First Filming Session

This lesson was our first filming session. After all the planning we finally got to do the practical work our group was all excited to do. After a short delay because of the whole class being present in the media studies room getting ready to receive their cameras to go out and film, we started to set up the room for us to film in. Everyone was very enthusiastic as we had all have been waiting for this part of the project.

After we set up the room we realised that we can only film a small part of our thriller because the person who is going to play the alien is not decided yet and because we did not have the costume of that character ready but would be ready for the next lesson. So we came to the conclusion that we will just film the doctor’s (Ola) role in the film. This was difficult as we could only film from one side of the room because we would have needed the other character, the alien, to be seen when filming on that side of the room. This could have easily leaded to our group making a simple mistake but as I spotted this, we avoided this error. We then decided to just do the close up shots of so that there is not much of a background like the extreme close up Ola slowly reaching the door handle to open the door with the sense of suspicion and tension. We thought this was a good starting shot because the audience will have no clue who’s hand it is which will keep them guessing as we only reveal the hand and nothing else of the person. Not knowing the identity of a character is a thrilling technique. This is also a good way to introduce a match cut as we had learned in our previous practice practical.

We then started to film inside the room but the room was too bright and would mess up our idea of this dark and lonely atmosphere so we took off the lights and got a spotlight from the media department. This was even better for us as we could now film our shadows which could be very suspenseful if we capture the shots right. This could also allow us to film parts which we could not film, like perhaps a surgery knife cutting the eye or neck of the alien, due to health and safety issues but can just film the shadow of it looking like this action is taking place on the alien. This works as an advantage for us. The spotlight can also adjust its brightness which we could use to our advantage as the brightness could symbolise the mood. It helped in not revealing the doctors (Ola) face which creates lots of suspense so we tried to catch some shots where the lighting was poor in the room but that he was still visible.

We then got on to the slow, tense and unpredictable part of the scene be using slow pan ups and over the shoulder shots. We have done this purposely so the audience has a little introduction to the character but still doesn’t know too much. This allows us to show the audience the characters sort of personality through his gestures and body language which is very effective in thrillers I believe because it lets the movements communicate to the audience instead of dialogue which is an excellent suspenseful and thrilling device. After we did our pan up shot we added a brief case so we could get close up shots of the doctor opening it at the lock buckle and so the audience become very suspicious of what is inside it. Once it opens, the audience anxiety is relieved as there is only surgery gloves inside of it and here is when we us an extreme close up of the doctor slowly putting them on causing the tension building in the scene. When putting on the gloves, the gloves are stretched as he pulls it down to the fullest so that the glove slaps the wrist of his hand so the audience identify this intertextuality sort of method and recognise the message of that action is about to take place.

The lesson seemed to go very quick and we didn’t film as much as we wanted. This was due to waiting for everybody leaving the classroom, costume changes and collection (like the lab coat from the science laboratory) and many retaken shots because people walking past when we were filming, interrupting our scene. Looking forward to the next lesson, we have a sort of miniature plan of what we will be filming and we are going to make sure precious time is not lost by setting up the filming set and getting into filming as soon as we enter the classroom.

Lastly, we discussed how we can get on with filming quickly and get into the computer rooms to start editing and came up with a solution that we will take the filming equipment out on one day during the week to film our short King’s Cross scene so that this will save time. This would be in our own free time so that we don’t have to use a lesson for this scene. We could also use our free time to brush up any certain parts in our film like using more camera shots and angles which will boost up our marks and so our thriller can be up to a standard of our full potential.

Overall, we were very satisfied of what our group achieved in this lesson. We showed teamwork and enthusiasm which are both needed in order to achieve a good result and this allowed us to leave the classroom with a smile on our face, which had not been happening in previous lessons. Now we had a little of the filming experience under our belt, we could finish the filming in maybe the next lesson or two without no delays.