Update on filming for our trailer

Readers,

On 28th and 29th September Beth and I started filming our horror trailer. We first started by filming on Sunday (28th Sept) evening. We decided as the night was dark we should star with the evening/night scenes with our actress Keira as the dark entity.

In the first scene we decided to do the bedroom scene where Beth and I are asleep and the bathroom door opens on its own. The next shot is of a dark figure standing at the end of the bed. The door slams and we both wake. We had difficulties with this scene as the camcorder wouldn't film in such low light. To counter this we had to face a lamp the in another direction so shed enough light on the set so that the filming would be successful.
After a few false starts and being interrupted we finally filmed the whole scene from two different directions. One of which was filming with the camera pointed at our bed and the other was filming the bathroom door.

The second scene we did was the bathroom scene where Beth and I walk in using dialogue and find that the taps are on full stream but there is no one there. This scene was quite easy to film as we only had to use our improvised speech wondering why, how and who had done this.

After we did these two scenes we walked all the way up to the top of the school tower to film the "north tower scene". This scene consisted of seeing the dark entity in the mirror and also walking to the tower store rooms. All three of us found this scene quite hard to film as we all started to jump at shadows. We filmed the tower rooms by just walking and film around them without anything happening to us in the scene. The last scene we did of the night was walking down the stairs but then something happens to Beth and I and we drop the camera to only have it picked up and turned off by a back hand. This scene was the hardest as we didn't want to damage the camera but still wanted the effect to look like it was being dropped. We had to film this scene several times before we were happy with the final out come.

The whole nights footage was a success and we are happy with the quality of acting and cinematography.

The next morning we decided to film four scenes that revolved around the main house and also outside in the grounds. The first scene we wanted to film was Lady Holfords room which we look around but then get trapped in the cupboard by something.... We filmed this a couple of times so that the dialogue sounded realistic for the viewer.

Beth and I decided that as we were in this room we would quickly do the outside filming that showed something dark move towards the window and then move away again. We had to do this several times as we had to have a phone on speaker so that Keira (dark entity) could hear her prompt to get into position and when to move again.

The next scene was of the mirror on the balcony which we could see the reflection of something dark standing by the entrance to Lady Holford's room. This scene took a couple of tries as we kept on being interrupted by people moving around the school or walking straight into our shoot.

We moved downstairs and into the Library where we decided that we wanted Keira to be more in the shot so that it shows her ever there presence. We decided to film ourselves by putting down the camera on a table while looking at something. This gave Keira time to walk very close to the camera without either of us noticing. We had to test which direction Keira was going to walk from as her looking like an "alive human" would ruin the plot of the story.

Over all, the two days footage was well filmed and now needs to be edited for meaning. We are planning on filing more this week with our other actress who takes the role of our guide for the school.


Phoebe