Shoot Day

The first half of our day was spent shooting in the studio where we filmed the building of the wall around the girl who was wearing a long floaty white dress . In order to do this we used real bricks, camera and tripod. Each brick was layed down about every 5 takes (we increased the shutter speed) and this process was repeated until the screen of the camera was covered by bricks. We did this for several different angles and levels as the idea was that the character is being metaphorically buried alive so we needed to make sure that we covered every part of her body, from the feet to the eyes. (which are the last part of her that you see, in order to get a feel of her final anguish and fear before the last brick is layed on) All this was filmed as a close up. For every angle we shot, we filmed an image of the body part which was going to be covered up before putting on the first brick. This was so we could encapsulate the emotions of the character through her body language. For example: fists clenching and unclenching to show fear and frustration. The lighting we used in the studio was fairly dull, which reflected the mood of the sequence. We also filmed shot 6 in the studio which is a shot of the girl standing in the foreground with the ominous shadow of a tall man wearing a hat and trench coat in the background brandishing a rope. First of all, we just filmed a head and shoulder shot of Sarah looking scared and apprehensive in the foreground of the shot. Then Luke (the man) stepped into the background (top left). We put a big white screen in the background which cast a good strong shadow of Luke, which added to the sinister effect. To make it even more mysterious, we filmed it so the audience cannot actually see the man but only his shadow. We then filmed a couple of shots where the man strangles the girl.

After lunch we filmed inside and outside the Lodge: the baby stealing sequence (explained in more detail below) and the bathroom shots (shot 9) which was shot (obviously!) in the Lodge bathroom. This included a few extreme close up takes of Sarah washing her hands extremely vigourously. (until they bled) This represents how metaphorically dirty the character feels so she tries desperately to scrub herself clean and ends up making herself bleed. We used corn syrup as blood.

In order to make sure our shoot ran smoothly, we had to make a few last minute adjustments so it took us a long time to actually begin filming! The actress who was originally going to play our main character was not able to be there. Then Bella (in our filming group) who was next in line to play the role fainted during the filming process (which was quite unexpected and scary!) so in the end Sarah (also in our filming group) played the part of the girl. There were also a few last minute changes in the sequence as there was not enough action in some of our flashback shots. Therefore we made a few alterations around shot 4 filmed outside the Lodge (one of the school boarding houses) where the baby is being exchanged from hand to hand. We decided that instead of filming a simple exchange, we would include some violence by having Luke (who was playing the villain) stab the mother (who I played) and then steal the baby. For this we used a kitchen knife with a bit of HP sauce on it to imitate blood. We decided to use a female character in the end as women tend to be an easier target than men and also it would be more likely to have a mother carrying a baby than a father. I brought in a toy doll which played the part of the baby. The only problem with this was that the doll did not look very realistic so we had to wrap it up in a big pink blanket so we were able to make it obvious that the woman was carrying a baby without the baby actually being seen.

Despite the initial dramas, I think the day turned out to be a success although we did get off to quite a slow start. I think if we had the chance to do it again we would probably have been a bit more organised and made sure that we had all the appropriate props ready and we should probably have got together some back up actors. Overall I enjoyed the filming process and I look forward to editing!