Reviewing the Second Test Shoot

What were you filming and why?

We filmed our second opening sequence idea, that included a young girl very sad at a train station and a shot of her father looking very stressed and then receiving a very important phone call that his daughter just jumped in front of a train. We filmed this because we felt that our first test shoot/sequence idea was poor and did not have enough detail to its story line nor did it build tension effectively.

What substitutions did you make in the test filming and why?

In the second sequence we used normal stairs instead of the escalators of a train station, we did this because we do not have any escalators in our school and we were unable to shoot outside of school grounds for the test shoot.I mimed drinking, that was supposed to be a bottle of liquor to show that she was severely depressed and turned to alcohol to get through it. I sat on a wall instead of a train station bench to keep with the consistency of the location, we remained in the same area to keep the shoot basic and less complicated. We also substituted a small wall ledge for the train track ledge, because we could not shoot at a train station, as well as not doing this for safety reasons.

We also used me as the girl, however I can not be acting in the actual shoot as I will be behind the camera and we used Jamie instead of the father as he was a male actor in our group.

What camera angles and camera movements were you testing and why?

We tested a low angle of the girl coming down the stairs to see the effect it would have in terms of defining her character. I do not think it gave the right effect as we wanted to portray the girl as a sad and vulnerable character, however filming from a low angle made it boring in my opinion and did not show the emotions on the girls face that we wanted to show.

We also tested the close up on the girls hand to show her nervousness and to be closer to her character from an audience's perspective. I think this worked well and was effective in terms of conveying her emotions to the audience. It also looked good and worked well.

Did you find this process useful as a group?

Yes, it made our idea clearer and showed us the amount of detail we had to put into our idea. It had too much story line happening for a title sequence, even though it was short, this was only because we did a basic exploration of the camera angles, not all the angles we would be using that would lengthen the piece further. This process helped us evaluate our mistakes which were deciding on our story board and the angles we want to shot before going out and shooting as it became just a brainstorming session with filming in between instead of just shooting the sequence.

What worked well?

The use of a close up on the girl's hands worked well and it will be very effective in our new sequence as there is a shot when he holds a whisky glass, and we want a close up on the whisky glass to show the importance of it as well as revealing more and more about the character without revealing his face because we want to leave his identity hidden to create a sense of mystery. The pace of the piece was effective however we found that not very much worked well and there wasn’t anything that we would recycle in terms of story line that we would use when shooting our new and actual thriller title sequence.

What didn’t go well?

First of all we filmed the sequence with an IPhone, this meant we had the option to film in landscape or portrait, without realizing we filmed it both ways which looked bad and amateur.

We also did not have the appropriate location required to get the right mood and tone of the sequence. The fact that we filmed it outside completely changed the feel of the piece and we did not see how it was working in terms of creating tension and building the suspense high enough to get the audience to feel intriguing by the piece. I believe we were not passionate enough about the story line of the sequence to make it look good. We, again, did not film enough which left us with a shorter video then intended.

When it came to editing I tried to make it look as smooth as possible but because of continuity issues this was not an easy task. I also tried to make the effect of her falling by zooming in with editing effects, because of the lack of footage it did not work well but the idea can be seen clearly which was what we had intended for this test shoot.

The location was different as well from what we wanted it to be and we realized how difficult it would be to film at an empty train station, let alone a girl jumping in front of a train without using tricky effects.

How has this influenced you with the next stage of your idea?

It has helped our group recognize the importance of a story board with camera work detailed and planned along with timing. As well as keeping a very close eye on continuity because it can either make time in the editing suite much more difficult or even impossible, therefore we would have to cut a lot of he footage which might end us up in a position where we must go back and shoot more or we will have a title sequence that does not meet the required time limits.