Shooting day evaluation.

On the 26^th of January we all decided to meet at 8:50 at the top car park to drive to Peaslake. 

At 9:00 there were me, Aidan, George, Chris and Clare. Neither Mike nor Harriet came, so I texted her to ask where are they. She replied, saying that we all have to meet at the ‘edit place’ before, there was a moment of confusion, but then H came to grab us and we took bags with props and went there.

There we’ve met everybody + the other group, which were filming in Peaslake as well. Mike’s found us a make-up artist to do the cut and bruises, which was really good, as we’ve been stressing out a bit about the make-up as none of us can do it realistically. Afterwards we've jumped on the bus and came to Peaslake.  We've unpacked and started dressing up the actors – it turned out that Chris’s shirt was too small for him and the ‘back-up’ shirt was wet, because the drying machine in George’s house has broken the night before. It was a nightmare – poor Chris had to wear a wet shirt… 

Clare’s dress looked really good on her (after I’ve ironed it -__- ) and we had two types of apron for her – white with flowers, which I preferred, and blue with white stripes, which looked like from ‘Master Chief’ show. Firstly, I wanted her to wear the white one, because it makes her look innocent and harmless, however, as we planned to film in the different chronology (Chris’s shots first) I’ve suddenly realised that she might get blood on her apron from the shots where they’re fighting – which shouldn’t be there for the beginning shots of her cooking. As we didn’t have another similar white apron for back up in case the first one gets dirty – we decided to go for the safer option and make her wear the blue one, on which the blood drops wouldn’t stand out as much.

It took us really long to prepare everything and start filming. When we came into the Adam’s kitchen we’ve spend at least 20 minutes preparing the kitchen for the shooting – moving away any disturbing things, like for example Adam had a really big blue bowl on the table, which we just couldn’t leave as it would drag away too much attention of the audience, e.t.c. 

Also, we were arguing a bit about the blood – George wanted to make the scene really ‘bloody’ and violent, where we just didn’t want to use too much blood as: A – we were in the teacher’s kitchen and B – we didn’t want it to look fake. However, the positive thing is – Adam has a really nice ‘island’ in the middle of the kitchen, which worked just amazingly well for us as we had the opportunity to film the Clare’s face from the straight angle while she was cutting the vegetables.

We started at 10:50, which isn’t too bad - in the time schedule we should've started at 10:00. 

We began with filming Chris – all the ‘bloody scenes’. Firstly, we’ve put him on the floor with the bleeding belly and made him crawl to the door – we’ve filmed it from a couple of different angles to have a variety of shots during editing. Afterwards, we’ve done the scene with Clare – where she notices him and pulls him back. Oh, and we’ve done a great shot from under the table, with a chair’s leg being just slightly in the shot – it looked really unusual, and, also it may bring in a feeling of camera, therefore the audience, kind of 'hiding' and silently watching the scene of violence. 

The last scene with Chris was his first appearance in the thriller chronologically – when Clare goes to get the lemon and we see Chris’s figure on the background. Filming this part turned out quite tricky due to space in the kitchen – we had to bring camera as close to the wall as possible to get the long shot, where both Chris and Clare would fit. We’ll find out whether it was successful during editing J

Explaining Chris his role.

Afterward, we moved on to film Clare, therefore the beginning of the thriller. The make-up artist did an outstanding work with both of actors, and especially Clare’s bruises looked so realistic! They didn’t stand out as much, so it turned out to be exactly what we wanted – her bruises were not quite seen in the long shot, however they become obvious when we show the close-up.

We’ve filmed Clare’s part much faster than the Chris’s as there was not as much action. The only noticeable problem – was the continuity: we’ve brought different vegetables, however only one each, so we realised we couldn’t make two shots (long, and then close) because the type of the vegetable will be different in the second one (close), as the original one has been cut in pieces in the first shot (long). Tom, who has been helping us with the camera the whole time, came up with a simple solution – we decided to cut the vegetable (it was yellow pepper, just in case you want to know) in half, so that we can film the whole cutting process from the beginning to the end twice. And that saved us, to be honest J

After we’ve done all the shots we needed, which I was carefully checking and ticking in the shot list, + safe shots for each, we had a bit of time (like 3 minutes really) for any creative shots we wanted to do. Clare and Chris both needed to be back at school by lunch time, so our last shots were all really rushed, and I nearly fell down like a hundred times on the wet floor, which Aidan was wiping from blood, however, at the very end we’ve made a good hand-held, which followed Clare on her way to the Chris for the first time, which I hope will fit really nicely with our thriller when it comes to editing.

That was literally me balancing on the floor.

During filming we’ve made sure that everyone participated equally. We were swapping around: so that somebody was directing, others filming, helping with the sound and filming ‘behind the scenes’.

 Overall, I want to say it was a really priceless experience. The amount of mistakes we’ve made and things we’ve forgotten about like radio, which we just didn’t use on the day for whatever reason or not making the 'putting on the chair' shot (WHICH I'M SO HAPPY ABOUT CAUSE A WOMAN LIKE CLARE CAN'T LIFT UP A MAN LIKE CHRIS) was huge, but I find it really useful as the best way to learn – is to learn on your mistakes. Also, as I’ve already predicted in previous blogs it was quite hard to work in the team, as we all have different views on how the shot should look like, so sometimes it’s hard to come to a conclusion, which  would satisfy everyone. 

Thanks to Tom and Mike who helped us on the day with cameras and decision-making, cause there were a couple of times when we’ve just stopped and discussed the next shot for 5 minutes, instead of filming it.

To sum up: IT WAS GREAT FUN. WANT MORE.