Behind the Scenes Notes

Here are some notes I made when we finished out shoot which explain the strengths and weakness of our shoot and how we overcame the difficulties as a group. 

What went well?

• Our idea worked well and we were able to stick with most of our original ideas
• I worked well on the sound boom and as the director because I was paying attention and listening to instructions and coming up with new ideas.
• Coming up with new ideas and adapting our scene outline and shot list to work best with the set and the layout of the church. 
• The actors were very good at listening to instructions and also came up with ideas of their own to contribute.
• The mise-en-scene of the location was really good and the costumes worked really effectively in creating the right look for the film.
• The fake blood and scar looked really effective on camera.

What didn't work well and how did you deal with it?

• The church was very cold and our actress was just wearing a white summer dress and so she was very cold but we were able to deal with this by giving her a jacket or a blanket between takes so that she didn't get too cold.
• At times our communication as group could have been better as we had different ideas about what would work better but we were able to sort this through discussion, compromise and listening to each others ideas an supporting those ideas. 
• The retractable knife was quite bad in terms of quality so we tired to cover up the parts of it that looked quite fake and unrealistic and we also had to bear in mind that this part of the film needed to be rehearsed a few times without the camera before we added the fake blood because we only had one shirt for the character and so we needed to work out the logistics of this shot before we added in the fake blood and so we were only able to film this shot once.

What did you change?

• We changed the order in which the shots were filmed due to the availability of one of our actors (Mike T) and also we needed to bear in mind that some of the shots needs to be left right until the end of the shooting, such as the use of the fake blood and the candles.
• We made some adaptations to the scene outline in order to use the location to our advantage. There was small ally way entrance that we decided to use for the psychopaths entrance. 
• Mike, the actor who played the role of the psychopath started singing 'It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas' in a very creepy and psychotic tone, and so we decided to add this in at the beginning of the scene when he enters.