The Shooting Day

The first half of our day we were spending shooting in the studio where we filmed the building of the wall around the girl who was wearing a long white dress . 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 a few various angles and levels because 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 feeling of her final 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 show 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 monochrome, 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 shadow of a tall man wearing a hat and trench coat in the background with a drawn rope. First of all, we just filmed a head and shoulder shot of the girl (me) 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 scary effect. To make it even more mysterious, we filmed it so the audience cannot actually see the man but only his shadow. Afterwards we filmed a couple of shots where the man strangles the girl til she lays half dead on the floor.

After lunch we filmed inside and outside the Lodge: the baby stealing sequence (which is explained in more detail below) and the bathroom shots (shot 9) which was a shot 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 protagonist feels so that she tries desperately to scrub herself clean and ends up making herself bleed. We used fake blood for the bleeding.

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 so in the end Sarah (me) 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 alternatives around shot 4 which was then 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 (Hermione from out shooting group) 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 victom 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 and chaotic 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!