Recap on Filming.

We are currently into the progress of editing our raw filming, so far I think we have the music left to edit, finalize some of the transitions between shots and generally darken all of our shots.
So I thought I would produce a blog post, recapping the process of our filming.

Our original filming location was at Emma's house, but after we got there and set up the tripod and camera, we realized her small hallway would be of little use to us, aswell as her patio window in the living room, so the living room would be too bright for the Ouija board scene. None the less we decided to do the raw bedroom scene at Emma's, this took us a few hours to film as we had to clear everything girly out of Emma's room to make it more convincing as a boys room! Sadly, the next day, the footage had taped over itself, so instead of 2 minutes of filming, we possessed about 10 seconds of one shot. This was a major disappointment.

To take another plan of action, we chose Sams house because he has a the biggest upstairs hallway, which would make it easier for tracking and panning shots than a hallway that wasn't very spacious, this was our main concern when choosing where to film, because a big portion of the film would be shot in that hallway. Before reaching Sams, we all agreed on the type of clothes the characters should wear, Jag would be more covered up than Emma because we wanted to show that she was more reserved and traditional, compared to Emma who was in a very popular backless dress for their age range. We agreed Sam should be in casual clothing, a shirt and jeans as you don't tend to dress more smartly when you only have friends over and since the recent loss of his brother, he'd be too upset to care about his appearance. We had Nikki to play Jay, as we ran into the problem of trying to get another boy to star in the production, unfortunately, none were available as they were still in college lessons when we decided to begin filming. Nikki was dressed all in black to blend into the darkness behind the open door.

Generally the filming went fine, we did practice runs through every shot though, at least 3 to make sure everyone knew what they were doing, saying and where they were moving to as to not obstruct the camera or bump into each other. There were a few bloopers when we looked back on the tape, but that was to be expected.
Most of the cast had never acted on camera before, which caused a bit of panic when we began, but the practice shots helped them ease into being on camera, even if there were a few giggles and slip ups now and again!
We used the storyboard as our main guide when I was directing the production and the others would use it to see how they were meant to be seated or standing to frame the shot how we imagined it.
The biggest problem was that the particular day we wanted to film, every other group had taken all of the tripods out and college couldn't supply us with one, so throughout the filming I would have to pan and track by hand, which was tricky trying to stop the camera from shaking or going off balance!
On average I think the filming took 2 hours to complete.
I found that the dialogue shots were much harder to shoot than the silent shots, despite me being stationary with the camera during most of the dialogue, often the cast would forget a word, panic and stop which would result in us having to re-shoot the shot.
We would set up each of the rooms with props, such as the Ouija board being the main one, a laptop in the living room to look like the girls are revising, some general bedroom props in Jays room like the lamp and the family photos.
I brought the fake blood to use on Nikki and Emma's faces, to give it a traditional horror convention, we also applied dark makeup around their eyes to make then appear more sunken, adding to the possessed looks we wanted to give off!
We also had to assemble the Ouija board itself, firstly by covering a normal box, then I painted it at home in my own time, using reference images from the internet to get the proper lettering on the box so it would be more authentic. Then I brought this to Sams the day of filming.

Here is me setting up the bedroom shot in Emma's house, which we would've originally used, but due to the lack of space, we didn't in the end!

Here is me putting makeup on Emma to give her a ghostly look to make the possessed sequence more realistic.

Here is a picture of Emma and Nikki with their completed possessed / dead makeup on, and their costumes for filming.

The only issue we had with Sams house that the colours in his house are very warm and bright and not really conventional with horror films, so we decided to darken our shots during the editing process instead. Also we believed that the traditional suburban 'homely' feel to the house would add to to a more dramatic production, as the audience could see it happening to them!