Shoot Day

Our day began with our group congrigating in our Media classroom and discussing the change of location. Two days before our shoot, we went and looked at the location, a room in one of the school's boarding houses, to make a rough plan of our set and the layout of room. After trying out a few ideas and having a conversation about the whole sequence, we decided against filming in the room because; firstly, the room is too small to fit the dolly for the tracking shots we wanted and secondly; by showing the boy in his bedroom, we felt the narrative is too obvious, meaning that we would lose some of the mysterious atmosphere which we felt imperitive for our thriller idea.
So, we decided that we would film in one of the Media rooms upstairs however this meant that we would have to create the set, for the first time, on the day. I was worried about this, but it proved not to be an issue. We used our creativity to develop an idea which meant that we could show the age and actions of the boy without revealing his exact location. By witholding this information, we felt we created a more mysterious atmosphere, which is important for our thriller, but also added another dimension; the situation seemed more sinister, out of context and therefore intriguing.

These are photos of just over half of the set. As you can see, the main colours are blue, green and black. Cold, boyish colours which don't seem homely, but make his surroundings look like a workplace.

As it turns out, the change of location (and set) meant that the mise-en-scene became more focused around the technology in the boy's room and actually suited the genre better. We were aiming to create a conspiracy thriller, with a psychological edge, so by focusing on the computers and technology more than the boy's room and autism, our sequence became more suited to our target audience and chosen genre.


By using these male orientated colours, our sequence became more focused at our target audience and the focus on the technology, we decided, would help to attract the younger audience we're aiming our film at.

 



The first shot we chose to film was the opening tracking shot, starting at the TVs on the right and then panning out to  reveal the whole room and then back in to an over shoulder shot of the boy under his desk. Firstly, we set about getting the rubber tracks and laying them on the floor in the position we needed them. Next, we worked out how to attach the camera on to the dolly and after this, we bubbled the camera, set the white balance and framed our shot. I volunteered to control the camera for this shot and another group member, Georgia, volunteered to control the dolly, while our other two group members, Georgie and Romey, had the hard job of moving the tracks out of shot as the camera moved back whilst staying out of the shot themselves. This was one of the hardest shots to produce as I began zooming out from the screen using the camera and when I couldn’t zoom anymore, Georgia had to pull me and the camera back steadily but also at a matching pace to the pre-set zoom on the camera. It took us 4 or 5 attempts because we wanted to perfect the first shot of our thriller but we did it and got footage that we were all happy with.

Next, we decided to film our actor, Nick, under the table, tapping on the computer and getting some shots of the expressions on his face. We chose to do this group of shots next for the sake of continuity- i.e. Nick would be sat in exactly the same place, all the set and props would be the same and the lighting would be just right. We filmed, essentially, the same thing  - Nick typing, moving the mouse and reacting to the screen – however we did this from many different angles and changed the focus to different areas to draw the viewers’ eyes to the aspects of the shot we wanted them to see. An over shoulder shot was the first shot we created, however it was closer to the screen than the previous one and we thought these would link well together. Then, we continued to film shots from the side; showing his whole body, the laptop and his surroundings; from ground level, focusing on his hands and the keyboard; different angles of the screen, to show what the character s doing and also an extreme close up of the side of his face and in this shot, whilst rolling, we reframed the shot and when in editing, we decided that this could look affective as most of our shots are still, it would create contrast if we used this one which has some movement.

The next set of shots are of Nick’s face and reaction to what he sees on the screen. When we began thinking about the shots we would like to create, a few weeks before shoot day, I had a clear idea in my head of a silhouette of the boy typing, which is out of focus, and over the top of his, in focus, is the layout of a hacking screen – perhaps numbers and codes, command boxes and logos of databases. The idea of this shot is that it would look like the audience is inside the computer screen, suggesting that, by him hacking in to this powerful database, the boy is now looking at us from the same perspective as the most powerful people on Earth – we are just numbers and letters and he is analyzing us. So, because this shot was my idea, the group decided I could film it, so I sat in front of Nick and replaced the laptop with the camera, taking care to keep it at the correct angle for continuity.  I then filmed Nick typing from this perspective and also filmed his reaction to something shocking on the screen. In editing, we will then put the numbers over the top of this to create the shot I had in mind. Also, we might find that there are other things we can do with this shot, such as play around with the focus and the things which will be ‘on the computer screen’.

We broke for lunch, talking about which shots we’d like to film next and continued discussing new ideas and concepts which we could either add in, or communicate better to the audience.

Once we’d finished filming all the shots which are essential to the narrative, we focused on getting ones which are slightly more abstract. I attempted a focus pool on the keyboard which worked well and Georgie used the slider to give a sweeping view of the boy  - the idea of this shot was not only to create more movement to make the sequence more interesting but possibly to use it as a transition from looking at the boy to going into the screen.

Throughout the opening sequence, we will have sections where the camera appears to go into the screen and from here we will create a hacking sequence in the after effects. Whilst researching for inspiration for what this sequence should contain, we decided that we’d like our sequence to be similar to the opening of The Andromeda Strain.

After filming everything we needed to which involved our actor, we let him go and began filming the objects on the table such as the clock – this was an important shot because we want to communicate that our character is Autistic and one of the characteristics of Autism is waking up in the middle of the night to carry out tasks. We set the digital clock to 5:02AM and filmed a close up and a medium shot of it to use somewhere in our sequence. We also filmed all the technology that was laid out on the table, such as the iPad, another laptop, two big monitors, two smaller monitors and some headgear.

Still keeping in mind that the majority of our shots are still, we decided to make a few more tracking shots along the table. This time, Georgie took control of the camera and Georgia pushed the dolly as she was the best at it. In the above photo, the camera is visible, which is set up on a dolly with tracks running parallel to the table as this was used for the second tracking shot we filmed. A shot which I particularly wanted to shoot was a close up tracking shot of the white Airfix model on the left of the table. As the film is about what the boy discovers about the 9/11 disaster, I was keen to foreshadow this by showing the plane. When looking for props, I bought an Airfix model of a Boeing 767 which is the type of plane which crashed into both the Twin Towers. I felt that this attention to detail would make the hint more obvious- if the Airfix model was of a fighter jet, the link may not be apparent and the idea may therefore not be communicated. However, keeping to the idea of suspense and mystery, we wanted to ensure that this idea isn't too obvious, so we used a variety of planes in the posters, such as the poster on the wall. Also, by including a fighter jet, it communicates the idea that war and conflict is on the boy's mind.

After we filmed these shots, we felt like we’d filmed everything we needed and agreed to call it a day. We packed the camera and equipment away, took the set and props away and put the room back to normal.