First day of filming analysis

On Saturday the fifth of February we filmed our interior shots and and some exterior shots.We began filming at twelve o'clock and continued filming until five o'clock when it started getting dark. The scenes we filmed that day were Megan and Jemma arriving outside Megan's new flat. Also Megan and Jemma inside the flat.
We avoided filming any establishing shots and it was a very windy day with low visibility. Because of this it was hard to keep the camera still even when using a tri-pod. However the darkness of the sky and gloomy atmosphere worked to our advantage, as this is a psychological thriller and we want our audience to feel nervous.

The inside shots also proved a challenge, because the room we used for Megan's bedroom proved too small to be able to film the long shots on our storyboard. So we changed these shots to mid shots and also used tricks such as standing on a chair to film the main actresses. By doing this we created high angle shots that made Megan appear overwhelmed by the room, even though the viewer can see its not that big. Using high angles shows the viewer how different Megan's perspective is to a normal persons.

Another challenge was filming Megan drop the mirror when she sees the man outside the flat. We couldn't actually drop a mirror, otherwise it would just smash and not be able to be re-used again. So instead we filmed her hands drop the mirror at a side angle, so you see her hands drop it but you don't see the mirror touch the floor. We placed a mirror under our actress's feet so that when she dropped the mirror it didn't smash.

In our opening there is a lot of focus on mirrors, we see Megan holding a mirror and looking at herself, clearly not comfortable with her reflection. We filmed this at a side angle, to show her split personality, there is Megan and then what she sees of herself. Megan has low self esteem, she is not comfortable in her own skin. We wanted the audience to see her inner struggle to accept herself. However the tragedy of our film is that she cant achieve happiness because of her mental instability. This is shown when she drops the mirror, smashing a mirror symbolises bad luck, in the case of our film it foretells that bad things are about to happen to our main protagonist Megan. Many recent horror films have used the technique of using mirrors to create tension , this is the same technique we used in our film even though it is a thriller.

We finished the day filming the stalker outside the window, which required a lot of shot reverse shot. It was difficult because there was only one camera. So we had to keep switching perspective, which required whoever was filming Megan's perspective from the window to then go outside and film the stalkers perspective. Hopefully once its edited it will look better though.

After this we were finished for the day, i went home and looked through the footage on the laptop. When i re played the footage on the camera i discovered that some of our exterior shots were shaky and blurred. We also noticed that in some shots certain items disrupted the continuity of the film. In order to correct these minor faults we will re-film these on tomorrow on Sunday the sixth of February.