Construction Post 22: Reflections on our Main Shoot Session

Overall, I think that our main shoot went fairly well, for example, the getting ready sequence looked good, costuming was much more appropriate and we stuck to the timings we had planned for each shot a lot better. There were still some issues though, in particular the red herring sequence.

Issues

These came mainly from the end red herring sequence which we had completely re-storyboarded after the test shoot showed it to be too confusing to build the anticipation we wanted. Although there was a huge improvement in it in the main shoot, we still had some trouble getting the distances right between the runner and the main character from shot to shot. The hand held running shot we had was also so shaky that it was jarring and meat that only a small section of it could be used.

We also noticed whilst editing that for one of stalker shot through the window, you could see one of the lights we were using to make the inside bright enough that the camera focused on that instead of the reflection in the window. This can be seen in the gif below.

In addition, we also noticed that we had some continuity errors in the kitchen section, for example lipstick on the glass before Tyra, our actress, had had a drink and her hand at the end of one shot not matching where it was at the start of the next.

The majority of these errors were very small and would be easy to fix in the back up shoot, just by making small adjustments, for example the errors at the table in the kitchen would be solved by shooting more of the whole action from either side.

What went well

For the main shoot we worked a lot faster than we did in the test shoot because we already had an idea of what we needed to do and for the shots that used the lighting for example we didn't have to experiment with where to position them or how many we needed.

The getting ready shots went really well in the main shoot as we managed to recreate the ones that went really well in the test, for example the lipstick shot, and made the others pacier whilst ensuring that we lit the shots better so that Tyra's face could be seen more clearly.

I was also pleased with how the how we changed the stalker shot so that the camera tracked forward and the audience sees a gloved hand try to open the back door. This really added to the creepy atmosphere we wanted to create and helped build the tension we wanted that our TA research had told us we needed.

Below is a picture of all of our main shootbard pages. Please click to enlarge.

Our main shootboard pages