Final Task Production Blog: Wrapping up Our First Day

    Filming at the park gave us a lot of creative opportunity. There was a lot of equipment for our director to stand on, which meant me and my friends could get pretty expressive with acting. One of the ways we did that was through having our director stand on a bench to create a high angle shot of us walking. This really helped to emphasize the scene of the two friends diverging. The places we filmed the two of us walking were also lined with streetlights, which helped to create a warmer environment with our lighting. For certain scenes the park also gave us a good environment to place our characters on different planes. This helped to make our scenes look a lot more visually interesting. For example, when we shot the scene with our two characters on the swings we were able to place the stalker hidden behind on this upper platform. This helped to keep the stalker both mysterious and visually in power.

 Once we wrapped up at the park, we needed to film the scenes with the stalker chasing after the main character. One of the problems we faced was finding a sidewalk that would have decent lighting for our tracking shots. This proved to be pretty tough, and we really wanted the perfect lighting for this scene since it would be the climax of our opening sequence. We found a public sidewalk that had lights along the path which really helped to illuminate the main character and make the stalker look very ominous. We quickly filmed the shots of me running and falling on the floor, but right as we were about to finish one of the people staying in a house nearby told us to find another sidewalk because he didn't want us filming there. With this new issue, we were back to square one.

    My group members decided that we really liked our original footage we shot on that sidewalk, so we looked around for an area with a similar lighting and look. Once we found a spot, we positioned the camera in a way that would make the setting change undetectable. With that, we continued filming the rest of these scenes of the main character being chased the stalker, using the same flashlight lighting technique to keep the stalkers face hidden and the main character's fear brightened. The new area we chose had a tree nearby that cascaded shadows over our stalkers face in a way to help create that mysterious aura around her. We finished up the day by reconvening what we would film tomorrow and what we needed to prep.