Shooting 5: My House

We hadn't filmed in over a month due to other work and unavailability, so we started again in January, ready to begin editing the trailer. We wanted shots of Michael and Even getting food supplies from other houses, so we used my house to communicate this, as we couldn't use Lizzie's house again (obvious reasons). We walked to mine after college. 

We located ourselves in the kitchen and followed the storyboard at first. We first got the tin shot of Michael, during which we experimented with the lighting (decided on lower key) and also added dialogue from Eve 'Michael we've gotta go!' as this corresponded with the urgent pace in acting. The quick pace helped take away from the somewhat boring concept of gather food supplies by making it intense and desperate. We thought it was good to have my name in the dialogue to help the audience identify me as a main character, however, I feel Micheal hasn't said much.

We tried to get an indoor cupboard shot (camera in cupboard) as Eve opened it to grab food, she would also grab the camera. But after so many attempts, we were beginning to think it was more conventional of a scene rather than a trailer because it was abstract. After this we also tried other angles that captured us both run into the kitchen, this was good, and we moved onto the improvised shots. I thought of the stair run weeks before the shoot, and Iain brought it up too, so we were beginning to think alike. It consisted of Me and Lizzie running down he stairs urgently. We tried this from both extremely low angles, and high angles for a range to choose from in post-production. 

As part of the introduction of the trailer, we needed a shot of a clock. We did get one at Lizzie's but we thought it looked too grande, and we needed a generic alarm clock that our demographic would recognise, so we used my alarm clock. We changed the time so it was 10pm, to suggest that '12 hours from now' the event would occur in school hours- 10am. We used an extreme close up, as planned to emphasise the importance of time. Low key lighting was generally used throughout this shoot because my house is always dark (shots looked better too), and it helped portray time in a dark, isolated way that made me think of Halloween 4, the scene when it's raining at night and Michael Myers returns to see the little girl... so I think time appeared scary and to foreshadow that something bad is due to come.

We then explored the house for any more improvised shot. I liked have the lights off as if the power had gone, it helped reflect the lifeless, end of the world idea, since no adults were about to maintain stable and normal life. I had an idea that showed me cautiously peeping through the window blinds, as it would intrigue the viewer. We all liked this shot. As we're about to wrap up, Lizzie was really into her role and I asked, if this actually happened, what would you do? Lizzie would be very emotional and so she tried to act upset (although it was good, it wasn't what we wanted to show in the trailer) Here are some clips from the shoot:

This was a good little shoot with little problems and creative thinking. We wrapped up and I made tea.