The Rehearsal Shoot

Scene outline:

A psychopathic killer painting/cutting into the victim, without the victim being shown properly until the very end. There are a lot of closeups of the killer's face, the paintbrush/scalpel, the bloody paintpallette, the killer's eyes, and basically following his actions. The killer got annoyed with how the victim is not looking the way he is imagining it to, and in the end he pulls on the body and looks the victim straight in the eye, annoyed. Then, in the end, he smiles in a maniac way.

The killer and his maniac expression.

 Pre-Production for Rehearsal Shoot

            We wanted to film our idea in a warehouse initially, however we decided that we would need no more than a few metres to film our entire idea, which can be done in the space that is given to us within the studio. This way we also have the ability to control the lighting better and make the scene look a little more eerie. In our rehearsal shoot we are unable to use the studio as the studio is currently being occupied by the A2 Students filming their music videos, so we chose to film in a classroom instead, as we do not need a large amount of space and it was easily accessible.

In our shoot we need no more than two people; the psychopathic killer, and the victim. We were thinking of having a middle aged man playing the killer/painter, and another male for the victim, who is still alive whilst he is being painted on. As we don't have the possibility to cast two suitable characters, we used the two people that were available to us; Sam as the killer, and Eloise as the victim. I do not think that our shoot will be affected greatly by the fact that the victim is in fact, a woman, and that the killer is a teenager. Luckily, we have the right amount of people, so our test shoot is not greatly affected by the fact that we don't have the proper actors around us at this very moment.

In the final shoot we would like to have the victim hanging from the ceiling in one way or another, however as this is most likely not possible to do, we would probably have the victim stand on a black box/a box that ties in with the background and make him look like he is being suspended from the ceiling instead. In our test shoot, to show the height difference, we will most likely have Eloise stand on a chair to make it appear like she is suspended from the ceiling (as the overall effect), and then have her jump down from the chair to make it look like the killer had pulled the victim towards himself.

We don't need a lot of props. In the actual shoot, we need a lot of fake blood, some paintbrushes, a type of scalpel/knife, a glass, a paint pallete, a rope, and other artsy things. In our test shoot we will use things like red paint, a chair, smaller palettes, and paintbrushes to substitute for the items that we will need within our final shoot.

Our Thriller Test Shoot

Reflection on Shoot Cycle

            As a group, we've decided that our idea is a thriller. Even though it is pretty gruesome, and include things like painting with blood, or cutting into the victim, it can still be considered as a thriller as the entire movie would most likely be about the psychopathic killer, and how he targets his victims. However, when I talked to other people, some people thought that it was too much of a horrific scene. Considering how media today is able to show more explicit images including things like blood, it makes it more acceptable for things like this to be shown within a thriller. As we never intend to actually show the psychopath cutting into the victim, but just have the intention there, then I think that it is alright for us to use this kind of scene without the video becoming a horror.

Our group agreed on that our clip is most likely too short. Even though our idea has the ability to be around the 2 minute mark, we have to include more clips that show details like we had planned to, to build a little bit more suspense. We did it a little bit with the cup, and the paint dripping, however I think that we have to include a little bit more. Perhaps we need to have more extreme close up shots of things happening to make it a little bit more interesting as well.

We also think that in order for our idea to be completely clear to the viewer, next to obviously having to be able to shoot the thriller opening properly, is be more clear on the victim's body and what happens with it. Does the psychopath cut into it or is it just painted on? That's what we have to consider before we can create our actual thriller.

Even though there is a small amount of tension, we have to build more suspense within our opening. It's not very thrilling at this point in time, and the reason for that that may be that we don't have enough shots of his eyes and extreme close ups that transition in between each other quickly. Short shot durations will give us the ability to give the audience no chance to be intimate with the characters and will make them feel nervous whilst watching the opening.

The angles can definitely be developed. If we want to be able to create tension, we will really need more close ups. The shot where he is holding the paintbrush, ie. The scalpel that we may have has to hide the fact that it is a scalpel, and rather seems to be a paintbrush, and that he is painting on someone.

We need to add more shots of things that happen within the thriller. We need more closeups and more detail to show things that are happening without giving too much away. We need more tension, and that would be one definite way of how to build this tension. Therefore, because the extreme closeups work so well and the tension is built through them, we need more of them; it also gives the audience an insight on what is happening in the mind of the killer and it makes them thing of what is actually happening.

Overall, this test shoot is a very rough outline of what we are planning to film, but hopefully, if we manage to create more tension and bring more closeups into it, we would eventually be able to make a good thriller.