Shoot Day Reflection

- We had to organize the shots depending when the actors, and crew would be available. 
- We found that we got all of the shots that we needed, and we also go safety shots so that if during editing we change our mind about anything we could utilize them. 
- We found that everyone worked to there full potential, and worked well.
- We found it hard to ensure that hands were kept out of the shot, and reflection were not revealing equipment.
- We found it hard to make our actor Mia to stay still for long times without blinking, to rectify this we just re shot until she could keep her eyes open, we also got her to make a sign when she felt that she was ready.
- A lot of time and effort was put into the makeup, becuase of the complexity of the shoot.
- We decided to get rid of the blusher clip, because it did not give us the desired look, and looked cheap.
-During the filming we were dealing with both a bunch of old hair, and were using candles, unfortunately the two came together. Luckily we put it out in seconds, but we should of thought it out more carefuly. 
 During, and before the shoot day there was a lot going on.

On the Wednesday we made sure that all the props, and costume were all in our teachers classroom so that we had time to check everything was in order, we checked off the props, and costumes so that we could communicate and still had 2 days to get both props and costume. On the evening before I packed up my personal camera, light, memory card, microphone, and spare battery, and then package them up into a camera bag. The next morning I had taken it up to the classroom so that everything was ready. We met in the classroom at 8:45 AM and collected all of the props and took them to the edit suite to meet Tom, our equipment consultant, he gave us a hand taking the equipment and props up to the location. 

Once we had all of the equipment we moved the beds, and gave the floor a quick hover, and set up the different areas we were going to shoot, including the bathroom, fireplace, and dressing table. We  ensured that all the items that our mise-en-scene was composed of so that when the actors arrived we had everything ready. This is good practice for professional shooting, because the longer you have your actors and crew waiting the more you have to pay them.

 

The above was used in the thriller to mark out who was going to be where at different time, this helped avoid confusion. We made Mia and Mike arrive first to brief them on how it was going to work, and what they would have to do, and timings. We decided to film Mike's shots first, because he was available, we then got make-up to prepare the equipment and explained to her what we needed her to do, this allowed her to be ready. When Mia was getting made up we did the first bathroom shot with the tap running, and then took the camera, and lighting back to the bedroom. 

In terms of makeup we decided to make her lips blue, and a really pale skin color so that she looked like she was dead.

Before Makeup

When Mia got back from makeup she got changed into the corset. We wanted to have her face shown with a defined and edgy look, we decided to use a honeycomb grid, because it gives light that travels in a very in a tight beam, and gives a high level of definition. The lighting that we used had to be very bright, because we were filming mainly extreme close up, meaning that we had to use a high F-stop to stretch the depth of field, and allow the whole face to still be in focus.

We found that makeup was not enough to make her feet look as if they are muddy, we got some dirt from outside and mixed it with water until it became mud, we then smeared this upon her feet.

During the whole process I found that working out how to overcome problems was probably one of the best parts, this is because of the satisfaction of completion.

I found the day overall to be very interesting, and we all felt a range of emotions at times, we felt annoyed at some times, tired at others, but in the end we all sat down and reflected upon the day and all agreed that overall it was a unbelievable experience. As a group I feel that we worked very well, together, and we each set tasks and sections to complete, and this worked well so that we did not have any confusion.