Filming is the part I enjoy the most, as I love thinking of new and creative ideas that we can include as we film, and I did this a lot on Sunday and also came up with ideas for our future filming. Luckily everyone in my group, including the actors are friends so we get things done efficiently without many problems. This makes working together much more enjoyable and we all feel comfortable
sharing our thoughts and ideas.
We met up at my house on Sunday at around 2:30pm because we wanted to start filming at 3pm, so needed to give ourselves time to set up. We chose this time because this is the sort of time the girl in our film would be finishing school. We thought that it would make everything easier if we just waited until this time because it would save us faffing around with the brightness of our film to make it look like a certain time., so this way everything was natural. Amy was here for this filming session as she was the only one that was needed. I supplied her with my sister's school uniform. A shirt, tie, blazer, skirt and shoes.
Amy came prepared with her hair tied up, wearing leggings and socks, which we pulled over her leggings because stereotypically, "geeks" always have socks showing.
When everything was set up and ready, we began filming. The first shot we filmed was my idea of Amy walking down a road opposite my house. I thought it would be effective if we filmed her walking from the end as an extreme long shot, towards the camera where we could then cut the film into sections and have each clip of her getting closer fade in with the next. This would look like time was speeding up and would make it more interesting and less boring than her just walking down the road which would take a lot of time. By doing this we could show the same action but in much shorter time, whilst also showing an editing skill. We then moved location a bit further back, so we could film Amy walk further along the turn in the road. We went through with my idea of filming this behind a lamp post in my road, which we stuck a 'Missing Girl' poster to. The idea of this was to have it quite subtly at the edge of the shot, not making it bold and obvious as Amy is not supposed to have seen it, so we are hoping to focus on the poster, and then move the focus onto Amy so the poster is then blurred when we come to edit it. This idea of mine creates dramatic irony as the audience witness the poster and the protagonist doesn't. This gives a hint to the viewers about something that could happen later on in the film, and this is that the man she has been talking to has been stalking other girls too, and they have gone missing. She is just another one of his victims.
Once again, I felt it was important to film as many different shots as possible as if we needed to go back and film something we forgot, the lighting, the actress or any of the surroundings could look different which would make our film look messy and irregular. Therefore I took on the role of filming from lots of different locations and directions. I went into my driveway and filmed Amy walking up it towards the house. I then asked Amy to go back and do the same thing as I filmed her again but from another angle. We also filmed her from behind too. All these different shots can now be mixed up and used to show her walking towards the house, but from lots of different angles which will make the film more interesting to watch.
Once this was done, our next step was to film Amy opening the door. We shot an extreme close up of her hand unlocking the door, then slamming it shut. We shot this several times as Amy was unable to unlock my door but we got it in the end! I then put the camera on a window ledge next to my front door so that Amy could throw her keys towards the camera. This worked well because so far, all of our camera shots have been distant from the actress or any props but this was more personal as the keys flew towards the screen, hopefully making the audience feel more involved as we are now inside her house, where she thinks she is safe.
After this we set up the camera in my bathroom next to the hall way, where we filmed Amy walk in the door and take off her bag and shoes. This shows that now she is home she is in her own private space, and can start her daily routine - get comfortable, make a drink and then chat to her "friend". We showed the sense of routine and order through the still shots that follow her as she makes her way through her house, showing no hesitance as to her next move because she does this all the time. We centred the camera on my kitchen island as we did a panning shot of her walk through the door, across the kitchen to the kettle. This is all part of the build up to what could possibly happen, as everything seems normal at this moment in time apart from of course the 'Missing Girl' poster at the start which indicates something is going to happen in relation to this.
We then thought we had filmed everything we needed to in the kitchen before moving on to the study, but as we took a break discussing what we had done so far I thought outside of the box and thought of a positioning of the camera we had not used yet. And this was to put the camera inside a cupboard, where Amy would get her cup from for her coffee. I placed the camera inside, and arranged the cups so that they covered any sort of light coming through so that when the cupboard opened, the shot would remain black until Amy removed a cup. This worked really well and we have already had numerous compliments from the style of shot I chose as it is unique. This is also another way to make the audience feel involved, as Amy takes the cup from before the screen, then shutting the door on it. It sort of makes the audience feel as though they are there, but hiding. Creating tension and keeping them intrigued.
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