Our first shooting day commenced on the 22nd December 2015 at Sutton Valence Castle, where the bulk of our footage was supposed to be filmed. We wanted to meet at 10 o'clock as that gave us enough time to complete the filming of our footage. The location was quite hard to find, as it was in a very new place to all of us, but with the help of Amy and the SatNav, we all managed to find in and arrive around the same time. We had previously looked at the weather and unfortunately it was forecast to rain, but as a group, we decided that we should still go ahead and film.
On arrival, we set up our base with large umbrellas so all the filming equipment would stay dry. We then explored our location, as only Amy had visited the site in person before. After thinking about where we wanted the specific areas of the killers lair to be set up, we began to get out all of our props. This took about an hour, because we needed the lair to look lived in, and not constructed, this meant covering some of the props in mud and using the fake blood to coat the knives, so that it looked as if he had killed before. We all helped in the setting up of the lair, as it was a fairly large space, we needed to fill it out otherwise it would look to bare. At the same time, we thought about the kind of shots we wanted to get and how we could incorporate our isolated castle location into our opening sequence. As we were inclosed by four walls (although all of which had different openings), we needed to ensure that we could get the right angle on the shots.
During this stage of the process, the weather turned on us and it began to rain. Luckily, it wasn't cold and we had umbrellas, so initially we were able to manage. We were able to use the weather to our advantage, as it added an almost eerie effect to all of our shots, again highlighting our genre. Unfortunately, during the set up phase of our day, as we were continuously walking across the same plot of grass, it became extremely muddy and slippery, and unfortunately David found this out the hard way, but luckily there was no physical damage, although there may have been a knock on his dignity.
The hardest part of setting up the lair, was hanging the body bags, as we hadn't quite worked out how we would hang body bags from a piece of rope in castle ruins. Luckily, after many trial and error attempts to hang the bag, we managed to secure them on protruding bricks of rock on the wall. This was made even more difficult with the weather situation as it was very windy which meant some of our props kept blowing away, and the body bays were not fully secure.
We then began with my makeup, as we wanted to get this filmed first before the weather turned. Charley is the best at wound makeup so she took charge, with the help of Amy, whilst David checked everything was in place in the lair and then worked out where he could attach another piece of rope which the victims would be tied up with.
On arrival, we set up our base with large umbrellas so all the filming equipment would stay dry. We then explored our location, as only Amy had visited the site in person before. After thinking about where we wanted the specific areas of the killers lair to be set up, we began to get out all of our props. This took about an hour, because we needed the lair to look lived in, and not constructed, this meant covering some of the props in mud and using the fake blood to coat the knives, so that it looked as if he had killed before. We all helped in the setting up of the lair, as it was a fairly large space, we needed to fill it out otherwise it would look to bare. At the same time, we thought about the kind of shots we wanted to get and how we could incorporate our isolated castle location into our opening sequence. As we were inclosed by four walls (although all of which had different openings), we needed to ensure that we could get the right angle on the shots.
During this stage of the process, the weather turned on us and it began to rain. Luckily, it wasn't cold and we had umbrellas, so initially we were able to manage. We were able to use the weather to our advantage, as it added an almost eerie effect to all of our shots, again highlighting our genre. Unfortunately, during the set up phase of our day, as we were continuously walking across the same plot of grass, it became extremely muddy and slippery, and unfortunately David found this out the hard way, but luckily there was no physical damage, although there may have been a knock on his dignity.
The hardest part of setting up the lair, was hanging the body bags, as we hadn't quite worked out how we would hang body bags from a piece of rope in castle ruins. Luckily, after many trial and error attempts to hang the bag, we managed to secure them on protruding bricks of rock on the wall. This was made even more difficult with the weather situation as it was very windy which meant some of our props kept blowing away, and the body bays were not fully secure.
We then began with my makeup, as we wanted to get this filmed first before the weather turned. Charley is the best at wound makeup so she took charge, with the help of Amy, whilst David checked everything was in place in the lair and then worked out where he could attach another piece of rope which the victims would be tied up with.
After we finished my makeup, we filmed all the necessary scenes with me in it, so that we could work on Amy next. Whilst Charley was doing Amy's makeup, I went around the castle ruins getting different shots of the props, in order to focus on the fact that he lived there. When Amy's makeup was done, we tied her up and I filmed the relevant shots we needed of her.
At this point, the temperature really dropped, so when we weren't on camera, we made sure that we had coats, hats and gloves on, in order to stay warm. Unfortunately, after we had finished shooting with Amy, it began to heavily rain, so we all took camp under the umbrella's but we needed to get the footage of Charley done. This meant that as a team, we held the umbrella over Charley, whilst she did her own makeup. This was very hard because the FX Wax got wet in the rain and very hard because of the temperature, so it was deemed very difficult to effectively get onto her ear. We then debated whether or not we should even have three victims, but decided to stick to the original plan and film all the footage we had planned to film.
Overall, the day went really well, although we reached many obstacles, we were able to work together to overcome them and record all the footage that we wanted to record. We had trusted Amy with the location as none of us had ever visited before and it definitely paid off. It fit our narrative perfectly and enabled us to get some really creative shots. Although the weather was a shame, it was out of our control and we still managed to get everything done, so regardless of weather, our team spirit and productivity was high which meant that we got some excellent footage.
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