Filming Day 1

Over the holidays, Eboni, Beth and myself had been in contact about when to begin filming in terms of when we were all free and available including the cast (Olivia). We decided upon the 3rd of January for our first day of filming.

Schedule

1. Meet at location (Beth's Nana's)
2. Fill in all consent forms and final planning for the day.
3. Begin filming in order of: door entry scene, family photo filming, walking up the stairs, approach of upstairs door, Olivia bed scene.

When we arrived at the house it was clear that we had a lot to address and that we wouldn't begin filming right away. Beth and Eboni filled in all consent forms including the risk assessment and location release before checking up on final plans for the day of filming ahead. After this we were ready and I began to set up the equipment in the downstairs hallway as this is where the house scene will begin. Before capturing any footage we fell into a problem. It was not serious however, and could easily be addressed. As we were filming during the festive period, there were still Christmas decorations up inside the location, e.g cards on the mantelpiece and tinsel up the stairs. Both areas of which were needed for our scene. With permission, we all helped to take these down as it would not look professional in a film, particularly a horror.

I firstly filmed a pan shot of the mantelpiece which had a variety of old family photos on it (as seen right). At this point we need to get lighting correct as I moved with a handheld camera across the old family photos which we used as very useful props. To ensure that the lighting was not too bright, Beth held up a coat against the window to prevent too much light getting in. We all took turns at this point to hold up the coat as it was not particularly an exciting job and it wasn't very professional however it addressed the problem that we had well. Beth then noticed at this point that another problem was the ambient sound in the house. This consisted of moving around, doors shutting and coughing so I will have to address this during editing as I am in charge of sound and I plan to replace it with non-diegetic music.

I then filmed a part of the scene with a POV effect with the camera going upstairs into the bedroom. Beth directed this part as she knew the location well and how it could work to our advantage as Eboni and I took charge of filming. I filmed on the camera going upstairs whilst Eboni filmed a very effective side shot of the bannister as we proceeded upstairs. I then had to crouch down to take a low angle shot as I walked towards the door of the bedroom to make it look imposing and we went on to film Eboni's sister (Olivia) in the bed scene. I provided high key lighting using the flash-light on my phone and Eboni filmed a  close up shot to focus on Olivia's facial expressions which began to look very agitated. This was all that we could film up to this point as we did not yet have all appropriate costume for filming.