Account of shooting day

Our production group met at 9am in the morning. We checked checked that we have everything we need : cameras, tripods, props. Our location was well situated, because it was very close and didn’t need to organize transport or other things that are essential when traveling on the shooting day.






We arrived at the location and spent some time setting things up : bubbling the tripod (making sure that it is leveled by looking at the spirit level and adjusting the camera) , finalizing our camera positions. The room we have chosen caused us some trouble, because while doing our storyboards we had overestimated its size. We lost some time trying to figure out how to position the camera on some problematic shots, particularly the wide shots where camera was placed in the small corner spaces of the room. I think spending more time on location in pre production would have increased our efficiency.





We decided to start with shooting all shots on our shotlist and then experiment.
While filming the wide shot of Josh in the shower the steam caused us some problems, we kept on wiping out the camera lens and the shower door. When we forgot about it, we needed to redo the shot to make sure that there wasn’t too much steam on the surfaces which would prevent the watcher from seeing our actor. I think most of the shots worked well, and didnt cause us too much trouble. Some of them we invented on the site, members of our group kept coming up with new idea during the day, and we were constantly adding new shots to our shot list. This included the shot of a cardigan dropping on the floor and a rubber band dropping in front of camera to underline the sexual context of the scene. We also did the shot of the killer entering the room, and also made her stand on the other side of the shower wall, so we could see that they are so close, but the jock is not aware of her being there and sniffing his clothes. We then did a medium wide shot of the room and some medium and extreme close ups plus the POV shot of the victim, therefore finishing the bathroom part.

We then started shooting in the corridor, we wanted to have a handheld shot of her walking through the corridors, but also a stationary wide shot of a corridor so we could have more shots during the editing process. We also did some POV shots of somebody walking down the corridor.
Then we moved on to title shots : the still shots of coat hangers with changing focus, tile shots and other small details.

I think most of the time our locations research was correct, during the shooting there were not a lot of location problems, the corridors were wide enough for handheld shots, even when done from the side.

At first I though that the lighting in the bathroom was a bit too yellow and warm for a thriller/horror movie. It could not be controlled and therefore we were not able to use artificial light. The lighting in the corridors was perfect - the first one was dark enough with its natural light and in the second we were able to turn off individual lamps, which allowed us to create a very interesting looking corridor in terms of lighting.

We recorded the ambient sound of the room and the shower. This was done with a standard stereo camera microphone which captured natural sounds such as footsteps in the corridor or shower sounds in the bathroom.

My main role was camera work and directing the picture. However I think we all worked very effectively as a group and while each of us had its own particular role, we had a chance to take part in all parts of shooting. Each one of us contributed something to the final result : whether it was an idea of a new shot, or helping with blood splatters.

Our group was happy with the overall result of the shooting, I think the last minute shot changes only made our sequence better and spontaneous ideas contributed to the quality of our production.