Thursday 26 November 2015

Thriller Opening Sequence Test: Shooting

Today, we decided to do a test shoot of our opening sequence. We shot with Genny's Nikon D5200. 


We found a location for both sequences that represented what we had in mind for the perfect location. We went into the school basement to shoot the corridor shot; 


the school common room for the bedroom scene; 


and a grassy area for the woods scene.


We began with shooting the corridor section. We found that the un-focused aesthetic was the most effective in this situation and we realised that the actor had to walk a lot slower than we originally thought.


Then we moved into the house common room which replicated the bedroom we will use. Here we had an over the shoulder shot of the boy entering the bedroom;


a wide shot of the boy sitting down at the desk;


various close ups;


[Here, the boy picks up is phone, puts his headphones in, and plays the song "September"]



and a wide for the boy dancing around the room;


[When shooting the dance sequence inside the room, we decided to have Lauren replicate the outline of the roommate's body that the boy would dance around, instead of doing it outside as it was raining at the time and the ground was wet. During this process we discovered that it was going to be almost too difficult to get the actor to dance in a mentally unstable without making the audience laugh, and as a result ruin the tension.]

Once all these shots had been taken to a reasonably high standard, our group split for lunch, and Chris (the actor) and I went off to shoot the outdoor woods scene.
We found the best possible flat grassy patch that wasn't too far away and I briefed Chris on how we had to replicate the following shots, but this time, in the "woods".
Firstly, the shot of him carrying the body towards the camera (replicating the corridor shot)...


[At this point, we realised that we had no one to be a dead body, so we shot without one, just to get an idea.]

And secondly, the dancing sequence...


[I used the wide shot (replicating the bedroom shot) at first, and then I tracked his feet around the imaginary body, while trying to not keep it that steady.]

That's a wrap!

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