Scene Three Shooting - 13/02/13

Scene Three Shooting - 13/02/13

Note the difference in ground
saturation above and below

Today I completed the first shoot of my thriller opening, shooting the third and final scene of my opening. In spite of this I feel I may still need another day working in the alleyway so as to collect a wider bank of cut-away shots. Before I do this, I must edit the clips I gathered today into a rough copy of the scene so that I can establish whether I have all the shots I require, and whether or not another journey to the location will be needed. The majority of the shoot went according to plan as I had hoped. The actors performed to a very high standard, obeying direction and other input from the production crew. I did however encounter several minor problems. A key problem, which was in direct relation to creating tension - one of the codes and conventions, - I encountered was the stabbing shot towards the end of the scene. As a result of both safety and legal reasons, it was not feasible for us to bring an actual knife onto set, therefore meaning we had to attempt to film the scene without it whilst maintaing a sense of brutality and tension. This didn't cause  much of a problem as we had planned to film the stabbing in a wide shot and close up, whereby the actual knife would be obscured. However it did cause problems when we filmed the killer leaving the body, as when he turned around you could clearly see that there was no knife in his hand. Collectively,we realised that we had to make the knife seem unimportant and shift the audience focus away from it. This in turn meant that the killer's body angle and the tramps facial expressions became the focal point of the scene. I managed to overcome the problem by arranging the two actors so that Adam's body covered the tramp’s, therefore the knife wouldn't be visible to the audience. I think this shows that I can overcome 
unforeseen problems, as the initial takes were rendered unusable.

One problem which I had anticipated early on but could not control was the weather. The day of shooting had started cloudy but the ground was completely dry throughout the early shots. However the weather rapidly changed and both rain and snow fell making the alleyway progressively damper throughout the course of the day. I fear that this will raise continuity issues when it comes to the editing stage of the process, although it may not be as much of an issue as we had initially feared as many of the later shots do not show much of the ground, instead focussing on the murder of the tramp. Only the wide shot of the murder and the killer picking up the wallet will clearly show the wet pavement. I believe through altering the saturation, exposure and tint in the editing process, I will be able to make this less noticeable.

Whilst the filming, acting and directing went well, another prop issue was that the fake blood could not be used on Tordar's clothes as it stained. I felt this was a silly error to make as it could have been easily avoided in two ways; I could have found a non-stain blood recipe, or changed Tordar's costumes so that he was wearing clothes that could have been stained, such as old clothes. However, I still chose to use the fake blood, putting it on the towels and in the gutter where the tramp lay, so that it was not wasted. Whilst these shots are not exactly the way I had envisaged them, they do still work within the rest of scene three. The diegetic sound of Tordar being stabbed and the action displayed on the screen will connote to the audience the horror of the murder, where the blood could not be used.

After looking back through today's shots, I feel that the audience will feel too distant from the scene and everything that is going on. This is due to the use of wide shots and I do not believe I have used enough close up shots of the scene to make the audience feel uncomfortable close to the murder. Furthermore, I have also found that the 180 degree rule has been broken within this scene. These are issues that can only be resolved through re-filming certain shots in the scene. There are some shots that I plan to keep from today's filming such as original wide shot of the killer entering the scene and the pan up of the killer's legs from the perspective of the tramp. However I will post an extensive shot list featuring the shots which I intended to re-shoot to ensure that my third and final scene follows the typical codes and conventions of the technical structure of the thriller genre.