Account of shooting day...

On Wednesday 20th January we shot our thriller sequence,there was a lot of previous planning involved. We had to write out a very detailed shooting script showing each bit of dialogue (if there was any), directions for the actors for their costumes and actions. We also had to draw out each shot in our storyboard and write out what special effects we would like to add them in post-production, the directions for actors and where abouts the camera would be located in each shot. We also had to draw out what we would like our set to look like and what we want in the frame.

Our firt location was a bedroom in Hurtwood belonging to 3 students in AS year. We did not have to do too much to the room as we wanted it to look natural and not set up this was all part of the mise en scene. In the end I think this location worked very well because it was quite a big bedroom which meant we had a lot of choice of where to set up the tripod as it was a big room. We also filmed in the corridor which was a little bit more challenging as the corridor was fairly narrow and we had to lay the track down with as little kinks or curves as possible.

We tried to use as many shots as we could to make it seem as interesting as possible, although for a lot of the time a tracking shot worked best. These tracking shots worked best becuase it meant that the girl walking could be followed, which created a really eerie feel. Another issue on our shooting day was the fact that it was snowing, this meant we couldnt use a tracking shot outside as the track would get wet and slippery and it wouldnt work as well. This was a bit annoying but we worked our way around it by using the tripod at very high and very low angles to make the shot interesting and to bring something new to the sequence. My favourite shot was a tracking shot we did past the reception with the girl walking down the stairs, I think this worked really well as it really reinforced the storyline.




The costuming for the shoot was fairly basic. We had decided that in order to portray a very ghostly look that our main character (the ghost girl) would just be dressed in a white floaty dress we agreed this costume would be best for her to portrat her ghostly-ness, she also had her hair backbrushed to make her look ghost like. Our other characters (the girl in the bedroom) was dressed in normal clothes although she was dressed in all black this was challenging the stereotype of good person white clothing, bad person black clothing. We did this because we wanted her to look as natural as possible, and we figured this was the best way to do it. The second person (man at reception) we had asked to also dress as if he was going to work, the reasons for doing this were the same as the previous character, we wanted him to look as natural as possible.

Casting was my main area in our shooting process, we had 3 characters to cast. For the main character (the ghost girl) I had originally wanted a blonde girl, who was quite skinny and very pale. Although I then chose a girl who had strawberry blonde hair who was very skinny and very pale.