Charles Lindsay Advanced and Foundation Portfolio: Account and evaluation of shoot day

I feel that our shoot day went surprisingly well considering the circumstances the group was in; our idea for the thriller had been changed a lot prior to shoot day and improved and by shoot day we had planned, storyboarded and arranged props and timings for the shoot, however when we got there in the morning and discussed it finally with our media teacher Matt, he decided the plot would not work to film and so we had three hours to rethink and change our idea before shooting the thriller. As a group we had a brainstorm and rethink about our idea which was originally having a Prime Minister assassinated from an upstairs window of the school, surrounded by extras being reporters and press, we had to simplify this idea down considerably and finally came up with the new plot that our Prime Minister and wife would leave the country house they were staying in and walk to the car, a man standing on the edge of the car park would then walk up to the Prime Minister as he got in the car and assassinate him publicly, afterwards then shooting himself. The plot was more simplistic meaning we could have more creativity with the shots and editing we would use; once we had decided on this we went and collected the new props we would need and we found a new actor to portray the assassin which luckily was easy. Although we now had the idea of our thriller, we did not have time to storyboard or plan in depth the shots and running of it so we were slightly underprepared to go straight into shooting it. As we still had time before the shoot we practised some shots of our assassin in the studio and learnt how to assemble and use the tracks, creating a tracking shot of our assassin, we also decided on some of the basic shots we would use for the film.

We started our filming at mid-day roughly, starting with establishing shots of the location and close ups of our assassin, creating the scene to film in. We experimented with various shots and tried focus-pulls and breaking the 180 degree rule with the assassin which went well in my opinion and we had soon collected a number of easily useable shots which we were all happy with. As we did not have the Prime Minister and wife ready at this time we just focused on getting establishing shots of the country house and close ups of our assassin to cut from the Prime Minister to. We did have some problems however as it was a very cold day which meant the battery drained very quickly on the camera so we had to change it, also it started snowing which was very unhelpful in filming as we had to cover the camera, and for continuity as we had to make sure we did not get too much snow in shot in case it stopped snowing later when we continued filming as that would ruin the continuity of the opening sequence. Luckily the snow was not too bad and so we managed to get a few more shots which worked before we went in to take a break from filming.

When we returned to filming, our Prime Minister and wife were ready to be filmed and as we had already filmed the establishing shots we could start straight away on completing our shots, starting with the tracking shot which we used to reveal the killer is waiting for the Prime Minister and his wife and that he has a gun, a vital shot in the opening sequence. As this was an important shot we had to properly set up the tracks and scene first, we got three wooden boards to line the floor to make sure it was a smooth surface, and then set down the tracks on top, making sure they were parallel and the camera would run smoothly across them. After this was set up we did some trial shots; as we were shooting this shot in slow motion we had to do some trial shots and practise as there is only 3 seconds of filming so we had to make sure we moved fast and timed the shot well, we set up our actors in their places and tried out the shot three times until we were happy and knew what we were doing. The filming of the shot went very well but we did it twice just to be on the safe side, after this we disassembled the tracks and started on the other shots in the thriller. Close ups of action between the Prime Minister and his wife were all also shot in slow motion, to juxtapose the shots of the assassin, this meant that we again only had 3 seconds of shooting time per shot as it was filmed in slow motion, which proved to be a difficultly however we did get a number of good shots to use from this which was good, after capturing all the wanted shots we now had to film the actual assassination of the Prime Minister. This did not prove as hard as I thought it would as we decided to use only one handheld tracking shot of the assassin rather than many shots from different angles, as it would heighten the suspense of the assassination and create unease. We repeated this shot many times as it was quite hard to time it right and to get a decent shot however we finally got one and repeated it to be safe, we were all happy with the assassination shot however we also wanted to get a close up of the shooting in case we wanted to include this instead of the full tracking shot so we filmed that also. When we had finished that and got a close up of the dead assassin we felt that we had got all the shots that we would need for the thriller and were happy with what we had filmed so we decided to call it a day, we packed up the camera and tripod, tracks and wooden board and took them back to the media room.

All in all I felt that the shoot went very well, although it was not the idea that we planned we were doing, and we were using more improvising than planning, we as a group pulled it together and got all the shots that we needed to create a good thriller in my opinion. The cold was obviously a problem and there were a few continuity issues in some of the shots due to the snow, also another problem we experienced was, as we were filming in a car park, cars were coming and going and it started to fill up which was a problem both continuity and space wise, it did not affect any of our shots although we did have to cut slightly short because of it which was a slight problem. Despite these inconveniences, the shoot day went very well and I am looking forward to starting the editing process and putting the shots together.