Account Of Shooting Day

On the 20th of January my group and I shot our Thriller called Mute. There was lots of preparation for the shoot day to make sure that everything was ready. Firstly, we had split the group up so that we all had equal amounts of responsibilities. I was to create this list and to sort out everyone’s roles, the budget of our film, the cast list and the props we would all need to bring in for the shoot day for example I had to bring in a metal bed. We also investigated locations to find the creepiest place to film, however we decided that we would film in the studio and create the set ourselves so that it was exactly like our vision. The mise en scene was the way we had planned it to be and all the props needed were there on our shoot day we also got a makeup artist from Madam Tussauds to come in so that the cast would look dead and so that all there wounds would look more realistic. I was also in charge of costume so I brought in lots of T-Shirts which we covered in fake blood and cut up and we made them look warn and used.
Set: As I said earlier we filmed in the studio and our set consisted of two rooms. The first consisted of a metal bed, which we hit with a hammer and broke the boards to make it look broken, a window with wooden boards and a light. The walls were fake stones to make it looks old and eerie. The mise en scene of this room was set up in this way to appeal to our target audience of horror fans to make them know the main protagonist was in danger and was a victim. The two rooms were connected together by a door which our main protagonist falls threw. The second room consisted of an empty room or what the target audience thought was an empty room. The lights were off but once the main protagonist finds the torch and flashes it around the room the target audience will be in shock once they discover that on all the walls there was blood, hand prints and a several dead bodies. We chose to do this as we felt that fans of the horror/thriller genre need a degree of suspense and excitement in most scenes and this we felt provided that.
Shooting: Our shoot day and the story line were not very different to our storyboards. The only difference was that in the end when the main protagonist takes of the tape from our “dead” bodies there lips were not sealed together by needles, this was hard to do in makeup. There were lots of close ups to create suspension for our target audience. We had one tracking shot which showed the main protagonist falling threw the door to get to the second room. I filmed a hand held shot of the dead bodies to make it seem like it was the main protagonist looking at them with closer detail, to do this we also filmed a point of view shot to show what the actor was looking at. We all had a go at controlling the set and I checked all the camera shots and helped place the dead bodies. I mostly filmed close ups of the dead bodies and made sure that all the shot were working with the rule of thirds. I was the second director so I had to make sure that everything was in the right place at the right time and that everything went according to plan.
Casting Choices: I was in charge of the casting choices so to make sure we had all our cast on the day I made them sign a contract telling them what they would have to be doing, when and how. As our main protagonist we chose as a group to cast Rory because he was a good actor and his look fit the part perfectly. We also felt he would appeal to our target audience of mainly 15-25 year old male horror fans as he is within that age range and would help appeal to them by being one of them in the film. For the “dead” bodies we had a variation of boys and girls to be more appealing to our target audience because it was mainstream. I also chose technically “good looking” people to appeal to a wider audience.
Costume and Props: I was in charge of the costume and props list. The props were very simple, we needed a bed and some duck tape to go over the mouths of our actors. The costume was simple as well lots of T-shirts (white, blue, black), jeans, shorts and ripped tights. This was all done to make the thriller look realistic and to make the cast look dead and tortured.
Lighting and Sound: The only sounds we used while filming were heavy breathing, smashed glace and a table falling on the floor. The lighting was also simplistic it was dark and most of the time, especially for the second room, we only used the light from the torch to create a realistic effect. In the first room we used a light shinning threw the window onto the bed to illuminate our main protagonist’s face we did this to create the effect of suspense which is essential to the thriller horror genre.
I am extremely pleased with the organisation of our group and how well the shooting, the props and the set all the came together. I was very pleased with my choice of cast because they all played a good part and the acting was very good. As co-director I can say I played a big part and helped with everything in check and made sure our shooting day was up to its highest potential.