Pre-lim; Production

Production

For the filming of our prelim we had to consider a number of ways to film the scenes in order to make them look professional. We had to think of ways to get the camera to stay steady during the filming to make the prelim look realistic and to also get used to the way that we will have to film our actual thriller movie opening.

The production of our preliminary was completed fairly quick, once we had figured out the different types of ways that we would get different angle shots with them still looking professional, we got on with the task and was much quicker and easier than expected. However we did face some problems, for example we had a shot of a person opening a door showing only their hand, followed by the next shot of the same person walking through the door, when we watched the scene through, the door didn’t open at the same time and didn’t seem to flow, therefore we re-shot these scenes in order for it to look much more realistic.

For the filming we used over the shoulder shots, 180 degree rule, satellite view, wide shots and extreme close ups, therefore we had to think of ways to keep the camera steady in all of these shots in order for them to look as real as possible. For most of the shots we used a steady table and a number of books to get to the exact level of the persons shoulder. The camera was stuck to the books by the use of blu-tack in order for it to stay still and not shake by holding it by hand, leaving the camera to hold itself felt more reliable that holding it ourselves. There was an exception of using this process with one of the shots that we used, the satellite shot, where we filmed two of the characters from above their heads. We done this to show the character who dominated the scene by taking us most of the table space.

We believe that use of the camera with the making of the preliminary work has made us more confident and used to using the camera when it comes to making our actual thriller movie opening, we now know how to steadily use the camera to get clear, clean shots. However the only thing that I think we could use when filming the actual opening is a selfie stick. We think this because when we were filming the satellite view we had to re-shoot a few times due to shaking of the hand. A selfie stick will allow us to film from the ground but instead extending the length of the stick to the angle we need it to go to. I believe that this will prevent shaking as we aren’t being put into an awkward body stance whilst trying to film.