RM - How Filming Went - 22nd January

How did the shoot for this go?

Considering it was January and we had to film in the day (although the film was set at night otherwise the production of the film and filming wouldn’t of worked). We fell that the shoot went well.

What lessons did you learn from this?

One of the main lessons I’ve learnt from this is that whilst it is important to plan in great detail it is also to be flexible to overcome unforeseen problems or challenges. Casting is also extremely important and attention needs to be paid to the strengths and weaknesses of the cast.

Make any changes to idea/storyboard/cast/roles/production schedule etc?

We had to develop the original idea. One reason was due to the month being January. For example our original idea was to set the film in a camp site in the local woods but because of the time of year, January, we moved the location to a deserted house, that a local estate agent gave us permission to use. We changed our storyboard to reflect this as well as creating a new idea by incorporating what we thought were the best parts of the original idea, if we didn’t manage to obtain the house.

What do you intend to add/change/re-do now?

We intend to gain as much feedback as possible and present it in either a podcast or vodcast. The feedback will enable us to improve the opening scene of the film. After receiving the feedback we decided we needed to do a re-shoot. However due short time scales and problems with the layout of the original house, it was decided to change the location. We will film in Richard’s house but this does mean that we will have to reshoot the whole sequence again.

What works and what doesn't?

In the original idea we intended to have a shot from inside of a tent looking at one of the sides with someone walking past in silhouette. However this did not work in the daylight which made it impossible to shoot. Moving the production of the film inside caused some problems. As time progressed the cast and crew started to get cold as well as some impatient on how long the filming was taking. For some of the shots we were unable to view the entire cast in the shot so we had to decide on the most important character. However we do feel that the false scare and the close-up of the victims face having a cloth put to his face and losing consciousness are well executed.

What audience feedback have you received, and what influence has this had?

The audience feedback we have managed to get so far is that

• some of the shots are too long,
• some are too obvious,
• there is some dialogue that needs to be taken out,
• there is sunlight in some shots and its meant to be the middle of the night,
• there isn’t any blood. 

This upcoming week we will discuss how we will be able to use this feedback to improve our project. There are some aspects of the film we will not be able to change. For example, although it is meant to be night, we will have to film in daylight as we do not have access to lighting equipment. Our experiences with the micro-drama filming taught us the difficulties of night time filming. Blood effects are difficult because both the original location and the new location are private property and we do not want to damage the furnishings. However as a result of feedback, we intend to use location of the original house in the cemetery and have recorded some footage. Our original rough cut was too long, 2mins 30secs but an advantage of refilming the whole sequence is that we will be able to incorporate the cemetery footage.