The Test Shoot

My group and I filmed a test shoot of our original thriller idea a couple of weeks ago, I would say that it was both successful and unsuccessful, this is why: To start I will point out that the first two shots were filmed, carelessly, in portrait format, this meant that when editing the clips together I had to edit the shots and make them landscape, thus significantly reducing the size of the frame. 

This was unsuccessful and created more work. This will not be a problem in the real shoot as we will be shooting on semi-professional camera's which will make filming in portrait an intentional mistake rather than an accident. Also these first two shots just come out of nowhere and don't connect well to each other, the shot duration is too long and therefor gives too much away, and doesn't achieve the chaotic, ambiguous effect we were attempting to create. Due to poor planning we were only able to come up with two close ups to start the thriller, had we spent more time preparing for the shoot we may have had much more shots to set the tone with a shorter shot duration to make a fasted paced opening to the opening sequence before heavily contrasting it with a sinister, long duration P.O.V shot.

Another moment where our test shoot proved to be n successful was when we attempted to shoot our P.O.V shot of a victim being dragged along the floor by the killer. Instead of looking professional and building tension it seemed rushed and very unprofessional, the lighting was not good enough and we could therefore only see the silhouette of the killer, this may have been classed as stylised, but we were not trying to achieve this effect. Also the actual motion of the dragging was very wrong. The killer would step backwards then aggressively pull the body towards him which made the camera extremely unstable and completely destroyed any tension that was created. We now realise that it would be very difficult to execute perfect fluidity in the shot as the motion of pulling a heavy weight along the ground without stopping and starting is very hard, especially when doing so at a slow pace. However this particular shot has been useful despite being a failure in regards of what we were trying to achieve. It has shown us the difficulty of the shot we were trying to create and the issues with practicality of a P.O.V shoot in this situation, had we have continued this idea we would have aimed to improve this shot imparticular due to it being the foundation of our idea and the primary source of tension. 

Another problem with this shot was that it did not fit in very well with the previous two shots as they really don't set it up well, this mainly comes down to the distinct lac of tension created before hand and also the lack of sinisterness in the shot, the shot is meant to put the viewer in the victim's shoes and really feel the fear and suspense of the victim, unfortunately we failed to deliver. We tested this shot because we knew that it would be challenging to pull off in the real shoot.

The next shot is an extreme close up of the killer's eyes, this is placed in the thriller to add to the sinister tone and to allow the audience to be in an intimate proximity with the killer, thus adding an element of fear. We didn't encounter any problems with this shot as it was very basic and shot in the correct format, also the shot duration was well timed which helped link the two shots of the killer dragging the victim together, one improvement would be to again have more shots in a faster paced series to create confusion and make add contrast to the shots.

  We discovered that having very dark eyes for this shot would be effective as the whites aren't detected, instead there is a small white twinkle reflecting of the dark pupil, this form of eye is very sinister and quite alien-like when executed correctly.

We moved from the close up of the eyes to a long shot of the killer dragging the victim. It is very clear here that the shot is not set in a forrest which is where we intended to shoot the real thing, therefore giving the effect of the trees either side of the two people, instead we set our shoot on the astro turf due to its cleanliness and the lack of friction generated when dragging someone over it. However by selecting this setting we lost the demonstration of atmosphere, this may have created more tension inside our test shoot and could have made it slightly more successful than it is. 
This shot could be improved by adding a slight pan, I say this because non of our shots include a track or a pan, this makes the clip very repetitive and stationary. I did like the angle of the shot and I think that we will use the similar shot in our final shoot.


For the next shot I experimented with a cross dissolve transition to intertwine the two shots, and also to show that the killer has been dragging the victim for an extended period of time. 

 To show the killer dragging the victim into a woodland shed we implemented a stationary shot where the subjects move across the frame and into the shed. We used a chain link double door on the side of the astro turf to demonstrate this shot, the astro turf proved to be a good place to take all our shots. 

 When Khalil walked through the double doors he opened it without using his hands, he backed into it. This sort of killed the small amount of tension created in the shot, in hindsight we should have retaken the shot as it was not done correctly. If I can take anything from this failed shot it would be to not be so lethargic when it comes to getting the perfect shots required.

The final mistake made in this shot was when Khalil rushed Scarlett through the doors, this looked un realistic and again removed tension from the shot.

 The last shot we used was a tracking shot of a wall of sheets of paper, these sheets were substitutes for photographs. We had to return inside for this part of the shoot but it was easy to find a setting which suited the required criteria. This was a long tracking shot to show all the various victims that the serial killer had taken/potentially killed. We felt it was important to include this shot in the test shoot due to the importance it has in the narrative, we can see that the killer was a serial killer and that he’d clearly killed before. Also it posed a question for the audience: “Who are these people, and what has happened to them?” I would say that the shot itself doesn’t create tension, but the question asked does. 

At the end of this shot Khalil rips a piece of paper off a wall, this paper is meant to represent the photograph of the victim in the opening sequence, the photograph would be ripped down to show that something bad was going to happen. We couldn’t use a real photograph as we thought it would be a waste of time to print out an A4 photograph when we only needed to record the shots. I very much liked the tracking shot as it varied from the stationary shots previously used in the thriller. 

We have now decided to change our idea almost entirely, this is through development of the idea which progressed in our group’s minute meetings. We slowly drifted away from the idea of a generic serial killer in the woods, and after a while we left the point of view shot of the victim being dragged, despite the unique idea of that shot, it would be too hard to perform well, and this would hinder the professionalism of our final opening sequence. We developed our idea quickly due to the amount of time we put into our meetings in order to improve the idea, the test shoot was an eye opener to us that we needed to be more unique with our ideas, and that we needed to have more complex ideas for shots, rather than a selection of stationary shots. Having the test shoot was a very useful and productive stage in our groups development process, and it will certainly help us push forward into becoming more creative and cooperative as a group.