Final day of filming !

After re arranging the date many times, we finally decided a date and time where we could film the dance scenes at Bodens studio. Yesterday, we all went to Bodens studio to film Elle dancing so it could be inserted into the rest of our film. These dance scenes are important as it makes the audience more aware of Elle's character-that she is a dancer and this adds to the idea of a music box being incorporated as it has a dancer inside. Although this scene is amongst one of the first scenes in our film opening we ended up filming it last !

Firstly we started off by filming some shots of Elle's feet, going on point. These shots were either long shots or extreme close ups of her feet. We decided to do loads of different ballet techniques and movements as we thought that more would be better than less and somehow, either at the start of our film, with the quick transitions or with the help of fading transitions can show how she got from each shot.

We then filmed some long shots of Elle spinning. We started zoomed in and then slowly zoomed out to reveal Elle. The reason why we did this was because since inside the music box there is a ballet dancer spinning, with a zoom transition Elle will mimic what the ballet dancer inside the box is doing. This is to help show the audience that the box is sort of like a voodoo doll and it controls Elle.

Following on from this shot, we did a extreme close up/canted angle of Elle falling. This shot would come after the shot we previously filmed of Billy slamming the box down. This also proves that the box is a "voodoo doll" and that Billy has some kind of control or power over her. We got this idea from the film "Save the last dance" but we changed it so it was unique for our film.

We also filmed a lot of split jumps through the air. We may not include these shots but we thought if we had more time left over it would make sense to have more footage that shows that she's a ballet dancer. These shots were pan shot follows across the whole room. You could also see Elle through the mirror. This shot was difficult to film because there was no way we could pan across the whole room in the mirrors without the camera and tripod being seen. Luckily in the room there was a pole in the middle which was just big enough for one of us to stand behind with the camera and pan across without being seen. Also as seen in the picture, we filmed some "bar work" which where she completed various ballet moves. We may not have time to put these in our film but we thought we might aswell, as we may end up using some in the fast transition start.

Then we filmed again from behind the pole but of Elle spinning and doing loads of stretches. We then zoomed into her in the mirror to show a closer long shot of her. I like this shot as the audience is not looking at her directly, they are looking at her through the mirror which also gives the audience a sense that she is being watched. I think that this shot makes up for the fact that we couldn't get hold of Billy so we could, unfortunatly, not use the amazing shot of when Elle bends down Billy will appear in the mirror.

Finally we realised that our next shot after this was Elle walking out of Esporta, so we needed some kind of real life transition to show that she's left one place and entering another one. We then panned her picking up her bags and leaving the room. We filmed extreme close up's of her turning the lights off and grabbing the doors. What we have realised though is that we can only use one extreme close up, either the switching off of the lights or the lift, from previous filming, as her nails are black in one and fake in the other. But this would not be a problem as we already have too much footage to deal with.

We had filmed all the shots we wanted and more so decided to call it a day. Today was the end of our filming altogether and I am both disappointed that it has all come to an end as I have thoroughly enjoyed it. However, I am also very excited as we can now finally upload all of our raw footage and start editting properly as we have filmed everything we need.

Fourth day of filming

On 10/11/09 we continued to film and it was an exhausting day as we were filming from the end of school up until 9 30 at night! But it was all worth it as we filmed many scenes and they were all filmed to our satisfaction.

Firstly, we headed to the cinema again for the second time during the filming process to finish filming all the scenes we needed at this location. During the week we uploaded what we had filmed so far onto the macs and realised that in the lift scene we had missed out a close up of Elles face in the lift to show her facial expression. Unfortunately, when we went back to the lift we previously used it was 'out of order' ! This messed up our plans slightly as we could not film this shot, so we sat in Morrisons waiting for Billy to arrive to film the other scenes we had planned.

Once Billy had arrived, we went back to the Cineworld underground car park to begin filming. Our initial idea at this point of the filming was to film Billy running directly behind Elle, but then we referred back to the bridge scene and took into account the fact that they were running opposite ways and realised that they can not be running the same way as it will not make sense and confuse the viewer. So, we inserted a new shot of Billy running down a ramp to the underground car park which will make them appear from different directions. We filmed this shot from a high angle aerial shot which was filmed by Elle sitting on a platform, Sophie running from behind Billy so it will appear shaky and unstable, a high angle side view and other different side views and one of Billy running towards the camera from a front view.

Following this, we filmed Elle walking down the stairs of the cinema as if she was running down the stairs of the bridge and this will follow the running across the bridge scene. We filmed this in different ways; a front view of Elle running towards the camera and then a pan shot of her running out the door on the right, from behind Elle to create the shaky effect and finally a canted angle of her running down the stairs.

Then, we filmed a side view of Elle running out of the same door through the car park and passing the music box which is sitting and playing on a pole. We also filmed this scene with an extreme close up of the music box and Elle in the background so the music box is the main focus of the shot as it is significant and tells the reader that Billy, the stalker is near.

We found a spooky alleyway we liked and filmed a long shot from behind Elle of her walking down the alleyway, seeing the music box and walking up to it, slamming it shut and walking off. We then filmed in the actual car park a scene where Billy and Elle bump into each other in the centre. As Elle was running away from Billy and not towards him, we could not have them meeting face to face. So, we filmed Elle running away from Billy then stopping in the middle of the car park and turning round to see whether Billy is following her and faces the camera, but then Billy comes up from behind her and she bumps into him and she slowly turns round to discover who he is. During editting, we will involve a strobe light in fast motion at the point where Elle turns round to discover Billy is behind her. This shot was a mid shotof both of them and portrayed their facial expressions clearly.

Then, we realised the time and we had to make our way back to school for a ucas meeting so we told Billy to meet at Sophie's house after the meeting so that we could continue filming. At Sophie's we filmed the newspaper scene again with Billy circling the date and filling in the numbers in the sudoku section. All this was still filmed with the red light effect. We tried two colours for the writing on the newspaper; a red pen so that it will fit in with the continuity of the red light effect and a thick black pen so that it would appear more prominent. We will decide which one looks better whilst uploading and editting.

In our made newspaper, Billy wrote in the crossword, 'Who's next', this shot will fade into the first shot we filmed which was of Sophie, Billy's next victim walking past whilst Billy is sitting on a bench. The audience will then become aware of Billy's next victim and we showed this in an implicit way. Earlier in the filming process, we filmed fake blood dripping off a saw and so we decided to film more following this scene. So, we used the rest of the fake blood and tilted the saw so that it poured on top of the ballerina in the newspaper and it slowly dripped onto the picture. We wanted the blood to fall straight onto the ballerina, but it did not happen the way we wanted so we told Billy to dip his finger in the blood and cross out the ballerina girl. This action reflects the idea of the stalker man planning to kill a ballerina girl.

We wanted the audience to become more familiar with Billy's character so we filmed him pacing up and down the den knocking things as if he was angry and frustrated that he has not caught his victim. Sophie's shed was full of stuff and so it was quite cramped and as we had to keep the continuity of the red light in the den, Emma had to sit on top of a pile of stuff whilst shining the red light whilst also ensuring she was not in the shot which was quite funny. We wanted to convey Billy's frustration so we told him to smash a beer bottle, but we did not manage to film it successfully as it fell quicker than we expected and we did not have enough time to film the transition from Billy's face and the smash all in one shot. It also made a lot of mess and we wasted a lot of time trying to clean it up in the dark at nine at night! We then filmed a low angle shot of Billy typing on the typewriter so you could see his arms and face in the shot so that it is clear to the viewer that it is in fact the stalker man typing up the girl's death story. We decided to film this at a low angle to show his importance as a main character and to also show his power over the ballerina girl.

Then, we filmed from Sophie's extension roof which gave a perfect view of the shed as it was directly opposite. We filmed an ariel shot of the den and as the shed door was quite hard to open, we had a brick holding it open then had Billy kicking it out of the way and then slamming the door shut. This also adds to his angry character. Then, we filmed an establishing shot of the houses across the field next to Sophie's house and it was really effective as it was pitch black and only the lights in the houses were on.

On this day of filming, we filmed so much footage and now the only scene we have left to film is a scene at Bodens studio which we have arranged to take place soon.

Third day of filming

Following the typewriter scene, we realised that we had not filmed all the parts we wanted to type on the typewriter. As myself and Billy were unable to attend this filming session, Sophie, Elle and Emma still managed by themselves.

So, today on 08/11/09 they filmed extreme close ups of words coming up from the typewriter that we had not included before. Sophie typed this as Billy was unable to attend. However, it dod not matter who was typing it because the camera was just focusing on the paper. They realised that everything had to be typed on the same piece of paper to show the continuity.This was quite a challenge especially for Sophie who was typing it as she could not really see what she was typing as it was in the dark it all became a bit frustrating.

This days filming was rather short and they only managed to film a short amount.

Second day of filming

On 28/10/09, we continued filming our two minute film opening. Our first stop was Cineworld in Enfield as they have an underground car park alongside a lift and stairs. We chose this location as it was dark as it was underground and was also dingey and spooky. The idea of using the lift was to show continuity in the journey home as when Elle steps into the lift she goes up, runs out the lift and runs immediately onto the Enfield Town bridge.

For the lift shot, we filmed an extreme close up of Elle's finger pressing the button, her walking into the lift and the doors closing in on her. We encountered a few problems at this stage because we had to ensure the lift did not go up but as the lift led up to the cinema the public wanted to use it and so this shot took a long time to film. We also filmed a point of view shot from Elle's perspective inside the lift with her looking at the music box on the floor which was placed outside the lift. At this point, she realises the stalker man is following her and has flashbacks, this part will be shown in sepia effect. The importance of the point of view shot at this point of the scene is so that the audience can understand Elles feelings as they are watching from her viewpoint. The last shot we filmed for this scene was a pan shot of Elle running out of the lift. We realised that this shot was immensely important as it links to the scene where she runs across the bridge which will follow there after during the editting process.

The next shot we planned to film was of Elle walking down the set of stairs after running across the bridge. But once we had set up the equipment we realised that we could not film this shot at this moment due to the fact that there was a big window which was allowing a lot of light in seen as it was around mid afternoon. This would affect the continuity of our film so we decided to film this part another time which was quite a dissapointment.

We then travelled to Sophie's house to film the typwriter and newspaper scenes, the stalker man winding up the music box and coming out of the car and an establishing shot of Sophie's house.



Firstly, we filmed Billy getting out of the car holding the music box from many different angles.This shot will follow after the blend of the two shots of him slamming the box and Elle dancing and shows the beginning of him following her. We had planned to film this scene from a front view but we then realised that the camera and tripod would be seen in the reflection of the car window. So, we filmed this shot from a side view of Billy coming out of the car, an extreme close up of his feet stepping out of the car and walking off and the final shot was filmed from a window upstairs to produce a high angle shot.

The next shot we filmed was an over the shoulder shot of Billy in the car winding up and slamming down the music box and this was achieved by filming from the back seat. Also filmed from the back seat we filmed a gradual zoom and and extreme close up of the spinning ballerina in the music box. The final shot inside the car was of the music box but focusing on the mirror inside it so that you could see the stalker man's eyes. The reason for this will become clearer later on in the film opening as his eyes are also included at the end.

Next, we filmed an establishing shot of Sophie's house to show the stalker mans plotting and planning place. We filmed the establishing shot at an canted angle swooping up to reflect the stalker man's character that he is not normal and rather psychotic.

The last place in Sophie's house was her shed which was pitch black and was where we were going to film the typewriter and newspaper scenes. The only light source we had was a red light which was created by a torch being shone over a top trumps box, the reason for the red light is to reinforce the thriller/horror genre and bring about ideas of blood and danger. We then filmed a shot of a saw with fake blood dripping from it to scare the audience slightly and to make them think about what else is going to happen in this den. We created our own newspaper with our names in the headline to show the credits and an article regarding a murder as the newspaper prop is relevant to our film. We moved the red light across the article to show each part separately and then filmed Billy slamming a cup of tea on the article and beginning to type on the typewriter.

On the typewriter, we filmed extreme close ups of "The Music Box" typed on the typewriter with the red light as a light source. We then zoomed out from this to reveal to the audience that it is the stalker man who is typing this and not the victim.

After two days of filming we have around 15 minutes of raw footage and we still have a lot more scenes to film. We are relying on the editting in order to shorten this to our two minute time limit, we have only had two days of filming and I am already looking forward to editting!

First day of filming

Today on 27/10/09, we started creating our two minute film opening. First, we structured and storyboarded our film and then headed outside to begin actually filming. I was mainly excited about filming but also quite nervous. On one hand, excited because we have been discussing this coursework and planning and researching for it for the past 2 months and so I could not wait to actually produce it. On the other hand, I was nervous because there was a lot of pressure to film what we actually had in mind and if it was not of the standard that we wanted then we would be really disappointed.

Today, we filmed most of the outdoor scenes where the stalker and ballet dancer are in the shots. Our actors were very reliable and we took pictures of their outfits so that we remember what they wore and so when we film over the course of the next few days we will ensure that they are wearing the exact same outfit with the same make-up, jewellery and make up. This is extremely important so that it shows continuity thoroughout our film.

Elle Hutchkinson(Ballet dancer)= We realised that it was impossible to find the actual outfit the ballerina was wearing in the music box so we improvised. Elle became more of a contemporary dancer and wore the following :


Black jazz shoes, black leggins, black leg warmers, black crop top, black lace overlayer, black over the body bag and black coat for outdoor scenes.


She wore her hair loose and curly with a black headband and had natural make up with simple earrings.




Billy Jarvis(Stalker)= We wanted to portray the typical stalker looking character and we did this by ensuring he wore suitable clothing, he wore the following:


Jeans, black leather jacket, black trainers and black over the body bag. The idea of him dressing in black attire also fits in with the darkness of the sky. The black bag could suggest he has hidden items in there that could be of some danger.







We began filming in the park at around 17:00 just at it was beginning to turn dark. The first scene we filmed will actually be the last scene in the film.

The scene was Sophie(the 2nd dancer) walking past the stalker as if she is his next victim. This was filmed by the river in Enfield Town Park as Sophie walked along the pathway next to the river Billy sat on the bench. We filmed this shot from different angles; wide shot, a shot from behind, a shot from infront and an extreme close up of the stalkers eyes whilst he read the newspaper.


Since most of our film was filmed at night and in the dark we decided to use nightmode on the video camera. Most of our film will be filmed in nightmode to reinforce the idea of the time of day being the night and it also makes it appear scarier and makes it clear that it is a thriller film.







Whilst filming we came across a beautiful reflection of the moon in the river. This really caught our eye as it was partially hidden behind a twig tree so the branches were sticking out and the silhouettes of the branches overlapped onto the moon. Although it was not in our storyboard, we decided to shoot a weather shot of this and slot it into our film somewhere to set the scene and atmosphere. We also filmed a pan shot from the moon in the sky down to the reflection in the ripples of the river.



After we filmed these shots, the night grew darker and it was too dark for us to film in our current spot as planned as it would not show continuity. We decided to relocate to a pathway under a light and filmed them walking past each other in opposite ways. This was a clever decision as you could see the characters clearer than in the previous location. We filmed this scene as a wide shot, from one end of the pathway and from the other end of the pathway.


We then made our way to Esporta Leisure Centre nearby and I asked them if we could film the outside of their building as it could pass for a ballet studio. To our delight they accepted and we began to film this shot. We filmed Elle walking down the steps as if she was coming out of the ballet studio at the end of a class . We filmed this scene as a wide shot on the other side of the road, an extreme close up of her feet as she walked down the steps and a pan shot as she continued down the road to show the linkage between the shot.

The shot following this was of Elle walking along the pavement. We filmed this scene from behind, infront, an extreme close up of her walking through the leaves on the floor, Elle then filmed a point of view shot of her feet and we filmed a pan shot follow as she walked.



Afterwards, we made our way to Enfield Town bridge to film one of the shots that I was dreading. The reason being was that it required great communication and timing between the directors and the two main characters. The shot had Elle running across the bridge right to left and had Billy running underneath the bridge from left to right. This was achieved by the directors and actors communicating via mobile phones to inform them about when to run and when not to. As Billy was running underneath the bridge on the main road we had to be extremely cautious so filmed the scene when the cars were stopped by the traffic lights. Our aim was to film it so that when the two characters were running in opposite ways their silhouettes met at the middle of the bridge at one point. The communication and timing all worked out perfectly and with the use of the bridge lights we managed to shoot the shot exactly the way we wanted which was fantastic. This shot actually turned out to be one of my favourite scenes to shoot because although it was difficult to time it correctly it was all worth it in the end and we also had fun and giggles along the way.

For our final shot of the first day, we filmed Elle walking down an alleyway then being followed by Billy shortly after. We filmed this scene from different angles; Elle walking towards the camera then panning around the corner, from behind Elle, walking past the camera and finally her sitting on a wall for a high angle shot. The use of this shot will portray her to the audience as vulnerable as she is the victim in the film.



I thought the first day filming was thoroughly enjoyable as did the rest of my group. All the shots came out the way we expected and we managed to shoot everything we set ourselves to film and more! The first day filming made me realise that our film will take a lot longer than we expected as we were out for around 3 hours we only managed to film around 10 minutes of footage.This is way too much as our whole filming should be around 2 minutes. This was because we found ourselves filming the same scenes a few times as we encountered a few problems for example, people walking past and cars driving past.But we thought that it is better to have more footage rather than less so that you have more to experiment with and more of a choice when editting but hopefully with the use of imovie we will be able to narrow it down to our duration limit.