For our shoot, we used a 4k Blackmagic URSA mini camera to film all of our shots, we had this set up on a tripod which we adjusted the height depending on our desired shot. We generally used natural lighting, although for some shots we decided to use a lightbox to enhance specific features by maximizing the exposure. For sound, we used a microphone which we plugged into the camera and held near the action to make sure when editing the sound is crisp!
Our day started at 8:30 whereby we got all of our props etc organised and ready to load the minibus up with. We then proceeded to do the actress's makeup, this was all finished by 09:00 whereby we were ready to head to our location. In the minibus, we debriefed the cast and told them everything we wanted from them, and once we were at our location the cast were all dressed in their costumes and we began sorting out the location. Will and I needed to pin posters up warning people who passed by that we were filming and that they shouldn't be alarmed by men walking around holding guns! And by 10:00 we began filming.
We had a few errors that we had to overcome, the first and most important being the costumes! The night before we realised that the jumpsuits we had ordered had "prisoner" writing all over the back of them, Cole tried to salvage this by using spray paint to cover it, although it wasn't as successful as we had anticipated. Considering it was the night before our shoot we had little/no options, therefore we resulted back to our original idea of the girls wearing dresses, although due to the weather conditions at the moment, this idea wasn't feasible, so we had to borrow navy jumpsuits from the theatre department at school in the morning of the shoot, the main problem with this is that we couldn't (really) get them dirty and we couldn't customise them (spray paint numbers), although we used them on the day and I do think they looked better than our intended orange jumpsuits. Another problem we encountered regarding the weather is that during the shoot we only shot one girl at a time, therefore the other was left standing around in only a jumpsuit, therefore they got incredibly cold, we offered them extra layers, coats, warm drinks, etc, although being cold proved to be an extreme issue for everyone on set! Despite this not being a major issue and we did find several solutions, the girls did get extremely cold whilst waiting around! Moreover, we had only anticipated to shoot the first girl (Zaza) for an hour or so as she only had a few scenes that she was in, although we ended up shooting her for the entire morning (10:00-13:00), which meant that Daisy was stood around for the entire morning and we could only film her in the afternoon. Furthermore, despite getting several shots that we hadn't anticipated for Zaza this meant that we only had the afternoon (14:00-16:30) to shoot Daisy's scenes due to the limited daylight hours, we did manage to get all of our necessary shots although timings did prove to be an issue as the sun going down began to creep up on us. Finally, a major issue we had to overcome is that whilst filming one of our scenes which involved fake blood and prop knives, we forgot to press "record", therefore none of the footage we got of that scene was recorded. We overcame this by reshooting the scenes, although it meant that we had to reapply makeup and that if we didn't pick up on this mistake we would be left without crucial footage that helps to move the storyline along.
Despite the many problems we had to overcome, lots of things did go much better than we had anticipated, including the overall filming of the shoot which I do think went seamlessly as we all stuck to our roles (with a few exceptions whereby we all wanted to try out other roles), by sticking to our assigned roles we all knew exactly what we had to do and when; moreover this led to an overall "smooth" day of filming. Due to the signs that we put up around the area we were filming we had no interruptions as people passing by knew that we were filming, several people did pass by and stop to see what was happening, although due to the wide proximity they didn't affect our filming at all. Moreover, due to the competence of our actors, we ended up getting far more shots than we thought we would, and we ended up adding extra scenes into our original storyboard and shot list, including far more coverage of the first girl. Additionally, we changed parts of our story including the part where the hunters depart from each other, we changed this to Hunter 1 (Stu) being the "games keeper", and as hunter 2 (Mike) takes the dog tags off the girl he killed, he passes them to Stu as they act almost as a trophy or a tally count of the girls he's killed. Moreover, we completely changed our final shot of the title sequence, we intended for the girl to walk over the hunter's body whereby she was covered in blood and angered with determination to kill the next hunter, although we decided during the shoot that that wouldn't be an end to an opening title sequence as the scene would be too elongated and create more of a short story as opposed to an opening title sequence, therefore we ended up finishing the scene with the girl (Daisy) killing the hunter (Mike) whereby she hits him several times with the base of the shotgun, wrangled the camera on the floor whereby she was able to thrust the base of the gun over the camera to create a black screen, whereby our titles will appear. Finally, we decided that since we no longer had numbers on our jumpsuits a way in which to show the audience the scale of the shoot would be to prove that there are more than two girls being hunted, therefore we filmed extra scenes with Zaza, whereby we changed her appearance by putting her hair up and changing her makeup whilst on set. By having more people this adds an element of depth and complexity, whereby the audience wants to watch more as they don't know what's going to happen next.
We used several different camera angles and movements, including a variety of wide shots, mid shots, and close-ups. We also used a panning technique of the sky, whereby we then panned the camera down to a wide shot of one of the girls running. Each time we introduced a new character we panned to show the scenery and then them, this also shows the audience their capabilities as the protagonist was displaying her survival skills by being hidden in a man-made wooden hut whilst making a survival weapon.
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