Test-shoot, reflection

On 16th of November our group filmed the test-shoot of a thriller opening scene. First we were worried that our idea breaches too close with horror, but on the screen it looked just right for the required genre.

The test-shoot duration is one minute sixteen seconds, that leaves us a lot of room for development. In the actual footage there will be longer, more detailed shots, cutaways and additional characters' movements. They will partly fill in the second minute. The pace with which the actions in the test-shoot took place was too fast, but this was due to shots' small lengths and frequent cuts between them.

The tension in the extract builds slowly as new details are introduced to the scene. First the audience feels uneasy watching the vegetables being cut and squashed. This feeling rises when the ambient sound of moaning is introduced and the woman increases the music volume to hide it. Another step up happens when her wounded husband is revealed, then another when she cuts his cheek and the stitches are shown. The climax of tension is the ending, when the psychopath fries a kidney in front of its owner.

The shoot was successful because it achieved its main goal: made our idea clear to the audience. The image of an injured and sewn up man, and of a woman preparing a meal with raw organs denotes that the rest of the movie is about a mentally disturbed killer. Her line "be quiet darling" and confusion on the man's face connotes that they are in a relationship. The plot is quite straight forward, so we could quickly convey the happening to the viewer. Another benefit was that we learned how to work in our group and communicate with one another. The filming process went well because all the members had their own tasks on the set; shooting, acting, or thinking of good camera angles.

Because of the limited time and multiple opinions it was often challenging to decide on the camera positions. I believe that overall the movement and angles we chose worked well, although they will need a lot more planning and development to reach the desired level. The first step towards higher standards would be creation of a storyboard and a screen-write on the detailed camera instructions. We filmed on a Cannon 80D camera and an iPhone 6, so there is a clear difference between some of the shots' qualities. This problem shouldn't repeat since the real opening is going to be shot on the same cameras.

We will add content to the opening scene to make it more subtle and engaging. For example it will begin with several shots from the outside, to build the suspense by presenting isolation of a house in the night countryside. We can show the rooms and mutual photographs of the characters to make the connection between them more clear and the further events more dramatic. Such supplements can promote significant improvements in the scene's appearance. The song we chose didn't work as well as intended, so more research will be done to find a fitting soundtrack. One of the variants is "Who's Loving You" by The Temptations .

After the test-shoot it was clear that the revealing moment of the husband has to be more effective. The way to achieve this shock effect is by expanding the build up and putting in a plot-twist. At first the audience thinks that she is innocent, so when she leaves the kitchen to get more ingredients or tools the following camera could capture a male figure in the background. After she returned to the kitchen the viewers could be shown bruises on her face and body, proving that she was a victim of the abuse. Then she hears sounds inside the house and grabs a knife as if to protect herself. She follows the noise until she finds her husband with tied up limbs and bleeding, attempting to open a door. At this point the roles of a villain and a victim switch, she drags him back to the position where the audience saw him earlier and returns to the kitchen to prepare his kidney for a meal. Although not all the group members agreed, there was a suggestion that cannibalism spoils the plot. Someone taking revenge in such an expressive way seems unrealistic. Media world already had multiple antagonists with the same feature, so using it once again seems unimaginative. Hopefully we will find a way to change this detail without offending anyone in the team.

Overall, the test-shoot was helpful in many aspects. It gave us a clearer understanding of what should be improved in our idea and how to work in a team. It also showed the difficulties that we will have to consider, such as clearing the filming space from strangers and collecting all the footage to one storage so it is easier to edit and we wouldn't loose parts of it.