Filming: Day 2

Day 2 of filming was the most filming I had to do out of all the days, even though it was only in one location, as I had to film the main bulk of the my teaser trailer. I set out with a plan of action and checklist in order to control my time management and deadlines. One limitation to the days filming was the amount of time I had with the actor that I was using as i he had work. With this in mind I we began filming as soon as I got everything ready. The things I needed for today's filming was my main actor James a video camera and tripod. I also decided to have a person to assist me with moving things around in the room that I needed. The room I decided to use for filming was a unused piano room I found whilst I was scouting for locations. The main part of my teaser trailer that I filmed today was the video diary of Dr. Jones in his office over a period of two weeks, but for the purpose of the teaser trailer it would be a only 5 diary entries, showing his slow journey into madness.

I prepared the room, with assistance, so that the piano and other objects were out of the way so that the camera wouldn't catch it on tape. In addition to this, I placed a table in the room to make it look like a work desk for Dr. Jones. I asked my actor to remove his earring and badge on his blazer and we were ready to start filming. I had to adjust the tripod at the right height and placed the camera. I  placed the recording screen facing the actor as he felt more comfortable and confident that way and turned night vision on to create the sense that Dr Jones made a diary entry after his days work, in the evening.

Before I actually began recording anything I directed James to do what I wanted him to do for the first day of his 'video diary' for the teaser trailer. DAY 1 of the video diary was Dr Jones' first day at his new job. He has been brought in to examine the mysterious case of patient 13. I directed James to be very high class in his speech and manner in order to convey the intelligence of his character. Additionally, his costume was a black suit and tie with a white shirt, this would also help convey this. I instructed James to tap the camera at the beginning of the recording as I played record to make it look like his character was operating and it was just him and the camera for his diary entry. Working together, we both improvised and came up with some dialogue for the first part of it and came up with something that showed that he was new and was going to analyse and have his first meeting with patient 13 the day after.

Similarly, for the recording of DAY 2 we improvised a dialogue based around the night after Dr Jones' first impressions and meeting with Patient 13. One thing I made totally important to mention was the drawings of that patient 13 drew and how he drew Dr Jones as a demon. I directed that James looked a bit disturbed by the fact his character was drawn as a demon, but at the same time not be too disturbed as he has dealt with other cases in the past. Another idea I came up with was that as the days roll by, that Dr Jones appearance looked like it was deteriorating. For Day 2 I made sure that Dr.Jones undid his top button and pulled his tie down to give the impression it has been a busy first real working day and shows an acknowledgement that this isn't going to be an easy task. The whole mood of this section of the video diary creates a platform to skip to about a week as everything cannot be squeezed into a teaser trailer.

Since I was filming for a teaser trailer the next day of the video diary was DAY 7, one week on after Dr jones' first meeting with patient 13. To maintain the sense of a breakdown happening I instructed James to modify his outfit by taking his blazer off and tie as well so he was just left in a shirt and waistcoat. The distress would also be shown in the glasses being taken off to start the diary entry. The dialogue for this was to be made a lot more distressed as if the case of patient 13 is starting to annoy the character of Dr Jones. One of the props used for this part was folder to make it look like Dr Jones has been studying and working hard to try and solve this mystery and ambiguous character if Patient 13.

After this was shot we skipped to last couple of days of his meltdown. For this I instructed James to take off his waistcoat and roll up the sleeves of the shirt to make it look like he is nearly on breaking point. I recorded a few of these scenes as they I was looking for different reactions showing this transition into insanity. again the dialogue was improvised to give that authenticity of madness and instructed for his tone of voice to be serious and really angry and distressed, throwing away his folder and cup of water. Furthermore, I shot some scenes with Dr Jones breaking down complete holding the camera and shaking whilst crying.  To finish the day's filming I directed a hanging scene and found that the best way to do this was to get James to stand on top of a chair just to film his mid section (waist to the bottom of thigh) and filmed him swaying from side to side which made it look like he was hanging create the sense that he was dangling. I only filmed the mid shot as i believe it was the shot that fitted the 'not giving too much away' category as it would create conversations and a buzz form the audience viewing it.

That concluded the days filming and I feel that I achieved everything I set out to film and feel like I worked really well with the actor and interlinked ideas to make my work feel a lot more easier and creative. The reason I wanted the dialogue to be improvised was so that the acting looked a bit more naturalistic and the actor I was working with was very confident with naturalistic acting.  Day 2 of filming went very well and leaves me with only one more day of filming which should tie together all the raw footage for my teaser trailer. Fingers crossed.