Thriller Filming - Day 1

At the weekend, whilst the rest of the group was tied down with job commitments, Ellie travelled to the abandoned mental asylum in Thorpe St. Andrews. She faced an immediate problem in that part of the building had been demolished since she had last visited but we still managed to get the shots we needed.

Today, we left sixth form at lunch (12:30) to return to Thorpe Marriott / Taverham in order to film the rest of the flashback footage and the awakening of the Detective. This meant missing 4th and 5th period, but we had Media in both of these lessons and had permission from our teacher. This allowed us to set up all of our props and the room for when our actor, Beth's brother Jacob returned from University.

We would be filming the scene in actor Jacob's bedroom as it was the right size we had in mind and was very messy. We cleared some general clutter out and covered the walls with pale sheets to pin items such as photos, maps, notes and drawings onto to create the room of a delusional man. Bethany managed to draw a sketch of the street on which we will be filming tomorrow for the flashbacks and we also constructed several notes to suggest the man's paranoia and fear. Here are some images of these props, both before we placed them on the walls and afterwards. We couldn't place the items on the walls themselves and so improvised and used bed sheets to create a "clean canvas" but it still created the effect we desired and allowed for an eerie effect to be created when the lighting was dimmed to film. We also turned the TV in the room off and left it tuned out, showing a bright blue screen, to spookily light the room.


We also took a photograph of the actor to play the Detective in our opening sequence. Jacob, pictured right, fits the character profile we had in mind for this character. He is very tall, around 6'4", with scruffy black hair and a strong build, and looks a lot older than he actually is. When dressed in his costume and when in the darkness he will look even older. He is quite capable at acting and from the few scenes today we saw he can adapt and take on situations without our direct guidance, i.e. we had to be out of the room for one shot so we left him to it and he got the exact shot we needed, a point of view shot looking at the notes on the wall. All other shots were captured by us as we directed Jacob in what he needed to do. Now he is accustom to what we need from him in our sequence he will be better prepared for filming the lengthier sections in the coming days. Overall today's filming went according to the plan constructed on the shooting schedule earlier posted.