Filming our footage

Once we had all of our storyboards and everything sorted, we shot our footage. Considering we only needed 2minutes worth of filming we filmed at least 5 minutes worth. But we also had to take into consideration that we wanted a varied amount of shots from different angles so when putting the final piece together we had a choice of what clips to use.
We felt we had very good continuity editing there is one scene where Georgia Day comes out of Roberta’s house in (..) and then we film her walking out of another house pathway round the back of the school near our main setting. We also used our own sound affects. Like when Georgia is walking down a footpath and the camera is being handheld, as if it is seeing though the eyes of the killer, the camera moves and we purposely snap a twig so it looks as if the killer is creeping. It adds to the misé-en-scene.
We encountered some problems when filming though. We had the problem of the weather, one day we would film and it would be a dull day with lots of clouds, this was very good for the ominous setting, but the next day of recording brought us bright sunshine and this was very noticeable when we tried to get some footage. To work our way round the problem we decided to use the time to take still camera shots in the woods for the end of the clip, where the trees blocked out most of the sunshine which helped a lot.
We also had to make sure when we were filming the scenes using the sharp meat knife, that there was nobody around as to not cause any panic from anybody misunderstanding that we’re in fact only pretending.
We used a lot of props to add detail to the clip. We used twigs to make sound affects; we used a real sharp kitchen knife to make it more believable. We also used a school bag to add to the ‘student’ image we was trying to create for Georgia.
The costumes we felt were in brilliant sync and fitted well with the characters. We used black clothing for the killer; this had the connotation of the dark, horrific nature of the character. We used a blazer and leggings for Georgia’s character, the ‘victim’. This was just a typical, day to day outfit that a student would wear. This made Georgia’s character more obvious to the audience.
When we discussed what types of shots to use, we decided on using the zoom but only for distinct shots where we are adding emphasis to a certain object or person. We decided to pan the camera around for most of the shots instead of hand holding the camera all the way throughout, this is because when we do have shots where the camera is handheld it is more effective and the audience will notice it. Also if we handheld the camera all the movement may make the audience dizzy.

By Maria Rostkowska