We wanted to secure a large section of our trailer. So we set up a day when everyone was available to film (which took some organising). Then we borrowed two baseball bats from the PE department and bought our own to customise with nails. The latter raised some issues. We knew that it would attract attention- a group of young people with baseball bats and one with nails in. So we agreed on the rule that whenever we were not recording a shot that required the bats, we would have them away in a bag.
On the day Daniel was already at my house (the agreed meeting place). We had decided to meet at my house because it was the closest to the nature reserve where we planned on filming. It was also directly close to fields which we also had planned on using. Lizzie had stayed at Clare's house (a short walk from mine) this was so she would not have to worry about travel but also so Lizzie could style Clare into her character Selene. We had agreed prior to filming that the girls in Michael's group should wear minimal or no make-up because they have been living in the forest and Selene should way a lot of make-up particularly dark eye make-up to add to the sophisticated villain image and to show that because Haden's group lived in the town she had access to her make-up.
After we had all assembled at my house, we gathered our equipment and made our way to the field for our first shots. Once we had the shots framed we did our first take which uncovered a problem: the mud. The mud of the field had a clay like consistency and to mine and Clare's horror from behind the camera Daniel's shoe came flying off and people struggled to run on the surface. We reset the camera and filmed again making sure everyone's shoes were secure. We gathered some bonus shots, because we thought the more you have to edit with, the better.
We came up with some bonus shots such as Haden's henchmen running past Haden and Selene in pursuit of Michael's group. We decided as well instead of the whole group jumping over the camera it would be more effective if it was after the split-up shot and it was Fiona jumping over the camera and the camera following after her. Likewise, when filming the tracking shot with Fiona we decided to frame it more tightly and this made it seem a lot more dramatic. Daniel also did an extra shot of Fiona fighting her way through the undergrowth as well. The shot was long but we knew it could prove useful when editing. Then came the shot of Fiona falling. We decided to have her falling in one shot so it was more dramatic and we got it on the first take. On reflection we should have made a few variations to choose from, but it seemed very natural and realistic so we were happy with it.
We then made our way to the tunnel which we had storyboarded. The tunnel had been considered for the making of our AS Opening to a Thriller: Parallel. But, it had gone unused and so we thought it would add visually to our trailer. Me and the rest of the bad group climbed down into the shallow stream and walked into the mouth of the tunnel ready to begin filming. We knew it would be difficult due to the slippery floor and the debris was also problematic. This coupled with the fact our shoes were filling with water meant we wanted to get the filming of the tunnel done as soon as we could.
We were filmed coming out of the tunnel twice, due to the fact that a started flailing my arms around the first time because I had tripped on some rubble. Daniel also got a bonus shot of us standing outside the tunnel with the camera doing a point-of-view shot looking out from behind a tree. We had not storyboarded the shot but we liked the idea so we did the shot. We made a few final shots of me saying the lines "Find them" we opted for just a close-up rather than the extreme close-up because we liked the fact you could see Clare and Alex lurking behind me.
We later found out that we had not recorded the best shot of "Find Them" and so we had to use one of the other recordings of the shot due to time constraints.
Behind the Scenes:
I was influenced by The Road (dir. John Hillcoat 2009) trailer, to have a shot of Haden's group searching the forest for Michael's group using flaming torches, the camera would move down to reveal Michael's group hiding. I drew this sketch to explain the idea to my other group members. Lizzie and Daniel liked the idea but argued that they would probably use electric torches because there would be less people using supplies so they would be available (in the narrative) but also it would be a lot safer to film. We did not film this scene but we kept the idea of Haden's group searching for Michael and his group, to add to the drama of the film and the trailer.
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