Account of Shoot Day
The day began as a normal Hurtwood Day. Breakfast at 8am. Within the next ninety minutes Sarah, Will, Chuffy and I would be shooting the first part of our Media Thriller, ‘Fire Wall’ in Dave’s office, in the main building of Hurtwood House. The shots we had in each location were adapted into reality straight from the storyboards. On top of this we also added other shot types such as, extreme close ups of certain props on the desks that we were using. These close ups consisted of papers and flags.
The afternoon before the shoot from 3pm, my group and I set up the studio for the President’s scene played by Roy. We set up the seven makeshift walls and painted each of them white and after school hours, I personally stayed behind to finish off a few finishing touches and paint the door and the seventh wall. We had also guaranteed that the essential props that we needed would be there on the day and that all the locations we needed were available at the times we could use them. Also, none of the actors had opted out for any reason so our jobs on the day of the shoot were made easier by all of this. On the day, the shoots of each individual actor wasn’t done in order, this means that editing could be more difficult but was a lot easier to shoot, because otherwise we would be moving from location to location too much, because of the cross cutting on the storyboards.
I believe that we were extremely well prepared for our shoot the night before and that we each had a clear universal idea of what shot types we wanted to use at each location and how they would individually effect the audience. Any changes that we had made to shots we took or locations we filmed in we done solely for the purpose of making the film more thrilling and intriguing for the audience. The majority of the shots that we used on the day were medium to extreme close ups. We used these shots because it gives the audience a sense of the characters and the atmosphere through the mise-en-scene. The effect of using these close ups was to completely engross the audience in the thriller from the start, keeping them hooked right through the opening sequence.
To put the political sub-genre of the thriller across to the audience we made a number of choices with the mise-en-scene to communicate this to them in a simplistic but effective way. The characters were all dressed in smart, clean, pressed suits either for a male or female. The choice of putting them in suits and making sure they weren’t just wearing a tracksuit was one of the many easy-to-do choices that we made in order to make Fire Wall more believable. Props we added to each scene such as desk flags to establish where each of the world leaders was from also helped to establish the sub-genre of our thriller. The locations we used were simple; this was designed to give little away to the audience about the film and to keep them hooked. However, I think in other ways this would have made the film more boring for the audience as they’re given very little to look at in some shots. I think we could have done more with the President’s scene for example, when he was walking through the hallway and when he was sitting down in the studio.
All of our characters baring the hacker were wearing suits. They were wearing these costumes to relate the mise-en-scene of the Political Thriller Sub-genre. They were wearing these suits to make the film more believable to the audience. Other films that I have seen where the characters were wearing similar costumers were ‘2012’ and ‘Flight 93’. The props we chose like the Apple Mac, glass of water, Top Secret Files with documents and miniature flags were used to make the mise-en-scene of each location seem more believable to the audience so they then become more interested by the film.
The actors we picked, we picked because they looked as though they could believably be from the countries that they represented in the opening sequence. The actors also look a believable age to the parts that they play, which would appeal to the target audience.
For all of our shots we used one source of light, which was a single floodlight. We used the light to create a sinister atmosphere in each of the shots. This sinister look was used to create tension in the film. The light fitted in with the mise-en-scene of the thriller and I think that it worked completely.
All sound that we had during the shoot was diegetic to the actors. We used the sound of the American President’s voice to establish the race of the character. We also had the sound of the President’s feet rapping across the concrete floor in the basement to create tension. When editing I will add non-diegetic music over the opening sequence to add extra tension to the opening sequence.
The night before the shoot I stayed after hours at school in order to finish creating the set. The next day I read out the lines of the President whilst shooting the other actors so they had something to go on when having to react what was being said into the camera. At other times, I directed the production and handled the camerawork. At another point in the shoot I had to play the role of the hacker whilst my team mates directed and filmed.
