Day 2 of shooting

On Wednesday the 8th December, with the school back open and the snow mainly cleared on most roads, we decided to take this opportunity to shoot some of the key scenes of our film. Unfortunately, there were yet more problems to come. Taylor was unable to make it due to having important lessons which he could not miss, however as the rest of the group and our actor all had free periods, and with time running out we decided that the only thing to do was to film without him.

We set off for our location (James’ house) in the hope that it would provide adequate mise-en-scene for our film. Initially, our first thought was that it would be a somewhat unimaginative setting for a film which is intended to be interesting and thought provoking, so we considered revising our setting to avoid making our film look like a run-of-the-mill sixth form film. However, we decided to do as much filming as possible while we could and see how it turned out, with the possibility of re-filming our shots in another location if the result was not satisfactory.

As it turned out, with some furniture rearrangements and strategic framing of shots, the footage we acquired turned out to look much better than expected on camera.

During the course of the day we managed to film three important scenes, including the scene where our protagonist is shaving in the mirror; the conversation between the psychiatrist and the protagonist; and the scene in which the protagonist is getting dressed.

Of the shots we attained, the one I was most proud of was of the protagonist shaving in the mirror. We achieved the effect of blood dripping into the sink with red food colouring, which proved to be the perfect texture and colour to look like blood. The positioning of the camera so that the framing was correct and the pan up to the mirror (making sure also that there were no unwanted reflections) took a long time to perfect but in the end it was worth it.

We also improvised with the camera, using camera angles and mise-en-scene not necessarily shown in the story board to create interesting shots. For example, we shot the getting dressed scene at a tilt in order to subconsciously convey a sense of something not being right to the audience. This technique has been used successfully in great films such as Twelve Monkeys (1995, Terry Gilliam); in which almost the entire film is shot at a tilt, giving viewers the distinct feeling of impending doom.

Overall, our day was rather successful, and we were even inspired to develop our ideas further, changing the storyline somewhat in the process (more on this in another post).