Production: Test Shoot Day 1

Day 1:

Production began at 12:00pm. We focused on filming the scenes with the police officers in first due to the limited time we had with one of our actors. Having done the recce before hand, we could quickly set up and commence with shooting:

The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema camera was mounted to a DSLR shoulder rig during shooting. We chose this because having it hand held with a steady but subtle amount of movement to make our shots appear more natural looking compared to a still surveillance stance of a tripod. This is useful as the measure of hand held movement determines intensity. From visual components theory, the minimal movement indicates low intensity and as the movement of the camera increases towards the end of the film, so does the intensity.

Our lighting consisted of Dedolight kit and an LED portable flood light. Florescent house lights were kept off during takes. This decision was made because we wanted to have a dark feel to the room. Our method was bouncing light off the white ceiling to create a soft light that didn't cast shadows. This applies to our theme of oppression; being that the protagonist is deprived of light and also the environmental mood adds to the sadness of her character.

As Director, it's my job to communicate with actors to bring out the performance that we're looking for in the script. The way in which I do this is to walk them through the actions of the script demonstrating them first. I then explain to them what they need to be feeling during the take and how I imagine their performance to be. But I also ask them to add their own artistic qualities in order to make the character their own. This is important because takes need to be as long as possible so that there is enough material to work with in post; so keeping in character until I shout cut is vital for this.

When creating the set and costumes, we used fake blood made from red food dye, ketchup, corn flour and vinegar to create the substance that would be used to paint the picture. We didn't use acrylic because we need a natural blood texture for the creation of the painting as the protagonist has been creating this over a long period of  time with their own blood; extracting it bit by bit the hand stroke it onto the canvas.

For the scars, we used foundation and PVA glue to create the bumps that represent previous scars from cuts that she got her own blood from. However, the thickness of the PVA glue made them look too artificial so we reduce the number of them and replaced them with an eye liner pencil which also added a shade of red to them. This is important as red is the stand out colour in this film.