Office Filming Day

On the 29th of March 2018, we went to my dad's office to film some shots for the office/secretary scenes. We planned to shoot some filler shots for the narration to play over for any part of the film, such as shots of flowers or cars driving along a road. We also needed to get shots of a general day in an office, such as a woman typing on a computer, files, and a woman using a photocopier. This would allow us to let the audience realise that these shots are taking place in the business which sets up the date between Bobby and Poppy. We wanted to get shots of Maeve acting as a secretary who would be on the phone to Bobby informing him about his date with Poppy.

We managed to get all of the filler shots that we needed which really helped throughout editing as it gave us lots of time for narration throughout the film. 

During the scene of the phone call between the secretary and Bobby, we decided to have our secretary scrolling on her computer through a word document of both Bobby and Poppy's applications to the dating programme. This is visible in an over the shoulder shot we took whilst the secretary was on the phone. We thought that this would be a good shot to allow the audience to have an insight into both characters and show that they have met through a dating programme.

Overall, our filming day at the office went very smoothly and only took around 1 hour to film, as we arrived at 4pm and we were finished by around 5pm. We had no delays and we followed the shooting schedule very carefully.

Filming Day

We filmed on the 19th of March 2018, and although we found that the filming went quite successfully, we definitely ran over time. We had planned to film from 3pm to 9pm, but it all started late (roughly around 4pm) as we arrived at the park location realising we had forgotten the SD card for the camera, easy mistake, but it set us back by a lot of time as we had to go and get it in order to film.  The outdoor scenes went very well - we had multiple versions of shots which were really useful in editing as we got all of these shots perfect. 

We decided to have Poppy chasing after a dog to make her seem a bit more simple and strange - we figured that this would be a funny touch to the film and this was possible for us because we were chatting to a woman with lively dog and she consented for us to film the dog with the character of Poppy.

We were quite proactive in using our resources and we had to come up with new ideas on how to heighten the tripod so that we could film over the shoulder shots of Bobby whilst he was standing - this was difficult because our actor is 6"2 and our tripod was quite small in height. To combat this issue, we placed our tripod on top of boxes that Eimir had in her house, which allowed us to achieve the shots we had wanted.

During the filming of the outdoor scenes, we found that we filmed these quite slowly and wasted a lot of time by getting distracted rather than focusing on our time schedule. Although we followed the shooting schedule very closely, meaning that we shot all of our shots in the correct order and took multiple shots of each shot we needed to take, to ensure that we had backup shots incase some had mistakes/faults; however, this caused us to end up further back on our time schedule, leaving us with much less time to film our main scenes such as the date scene and the killing scene. We found that this tight time schedule for the final scenes caused us to discard the shooting schedule and we filmed based on the script, leaving out shots that we didn't think were majorly important - which backfired when it came to editing as we were missing lots of filler shots and important shots which would've improved our film. We also found that there were lots of continuity errors in our shots because the filming was so rushed, and we didn't have many repeat shots so if our shots had mistakes we had no other option but to use them.

One major continuity error that we noticed was that the accents of our actors changed between the previous scenes and the main date scene - meaning we would have to refilm. However, this was slightly convenient for us because we wanted to refilm the date scene and the killing scene anyway, so this was an easy fix for us because the accent change only happened in these scenes.

We also attempted handheld shots in these scenes and they didn't turn out how we had wanted them to - so we wanted to refilm these as well and use a tripod. Luckily, our scene of Poppy pouring the poison was still perfect from the first filming, so this didn't need to be reshot.

We were prepared with props on the day of filming, and during filming some scenes we decided to split the crew up and have 2 people filming scenes and one person making the blood, the pasta and changing the photo frames to have our pictures in them; this worked for us as it allowed us to multitask so we could get more filming done and waste less time on preparing props. We rotated between roles so that one person wasn't being stuck on preparing props, usually rotating the roles between Eimir and myself so that we both got to take control of filming. 

 

Making Fake Blood - The Process

10th March 2018

Ingredients:

• Four 28 oz. bottles of orange or red ultra-concentrated dish detergent (the red frequently contains bleach - do not use any detergent with bleach)
• One small bottle of ultra-concentrated Dawn dish detergent (blue)
• 1.5 cups of creamy sugar-free peanut butter (regular will also work)
• One 16 oz. bottle of washable red poster paint
• Blue washable poster paint
• Black washable poster paint
• Sugar-free chocolate syrup

Tools:
Large pot or mixing bowl
Gallon-sized jug or pitcher
Spoon
Strainer or cheesecloth
Funnel
Microwave oven

Recipe:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Washable-Non-staining-Stage-Blood-by-the-Gallon/

The Process:
In order to ensure that the fake blood recipe we planned to follow on the day of filming wouldn't stain the tile floor in Eimir's house, we collected all of the ingredients (listed above), and Eimir then tested this recipe and did a stain test to make sure that it didn't stain, but also looked real in colour and consistency to real blood.

 
 


 


As shown in the photos above, the recipe worked just as expected and washed easily off of the tiles with kitchen roll and floor cleaner. Eimir had mentioned that the blood could've been improved by adding more brown paint to improve the colour a little bit, and also use more washing up liquid/water to make the mixture thinner. 

Poster Ideas

March 9th 2018

Today we explored some possible poster ideas for our film. We decided to plan this now because we figured that it would save us a lot of time if we could take potential poster photos on the day of filming, so it would make sense for us to plan a few ideas now to ensure that we get some good shots which we can use for our poster. This means that we don't have to bring our cast back again for a mini photo shoot for the poster.

Here are some ideas we came up with on a mindmap;

Making the Background for Interview Scenes

March 8th 2018

In our film we have included multiple scenes where the characters Bobby and Poppy are filmed speaking in an interview setting. We wanted to make the interview setting a little less boring, so we were interested in the idea of creating a prop for the background. We took inspiration from the show 'First Dates', as they have a background setting which looks like a heart printed onto wooden walls that have been painted white.





This made their interview scenes look a bit more interesting and also helped to let the audience know that these were private interview sections which took place at a different time to the actual date/current time in the show. We figured that this would be a good thing to include in our film, to help give the same effect. 

Our idea for the background setting was to create a big white heart, which has a smaller white heart with pink mosaic throughout it, with a black arrow being struck through the heart. We plan to hang this up against a white/grey wall - this will be our interview setting. 

To create the heart background, we used two large A2 sheets of white paper. We cut a large heart out of one of the white sheets, and a slightly smaller heart out of the second sheet. This second heart was our 'mosaic heart'. We cut multiple sheets of thick pink card into small triangular and trapezium shapes, and stuck these in a mosaic pattern onto the smaller heart shape. This roughly took me about 2 hours to complete. During this process, Eimir cut out two parts to an arrow out of thick black card. Once the mosaic heart was complete, we stuck it onto the larger heart so that the larger heart resembled a white border. We then stuck the black arrow parts on each side of the smaller heart, making it look as if the arrow was being struck through the heart.

Below are some pictures of the process of making the prop, and also a picture of our final product;

Updated Character Costumes

Shortly before filming while we were planning our props for the day of filming, maybe two weeks before the date of filming, we were looking at our costume choices and what we had available at home ourselves, and the clothes our actor/actress had available and decided to change the costumes.

Sticking to the plans from the previous post about costume, about the colour schemes and how red would represent danger and almost have an eerie vibe (see the previous costume post for more details), we decided we wanted to stick with the colour schemes previously chosen, having the characters wearing red or black. 

Eimir had a plain burgundy dress at home which wasn't going to be worn again so we figured that this would be perfect for Poppy's character considering we wanted to have a dress for her anyway, and the colour of the dress matched our original colour scheme plans. This was also handy as we didn't need to worry about the dress getting ruined by the blood if it ended up staining the clothes as the dress wouldn't be worn again. We also decided to have her character wearing a navy blue cardigan, as our actress Beth had this handy in her home and it still stuck within our dark colour scheme so it suited well. It also gave us an opportunity to show the poison bottle in the scene at the front door before Poppy enters the house as the cardigan had pockets that we could fit the bottle into. As for shoes, we kept it pretty casual and plain and decided that any sort of dolly shoe/trainer would work. For the outdoor scenes, we had Poppy wearing a black denim jacket over the same dress as we didn't want our actress to be cold during the scenes, but it also allowed us to show that the outdoor scenes happened at a previous point in the day and again, stuck with our dark colour scheme.

As for Bobby's costume, we pretty much kept it the same but we switched the colour of the jumper he wore to black instead of red, because we didn't want Bobby and Poppy's outfits to clash with colours. For his costume for the outside scenes, we had him wear a midtone blue fleece which just reflected how Bobby could act like a normal person despite his love for murdering, which was a common theme amongst many serial killers.

Shot List

Shot Number	Shot Type	Notes	Description
1.0	Extreme Long Shot		Cars driving down the road
1.1	Medium Close Up	-	Coffee being poured in to a mug
1.2	Over the Shoulder	High	Swiping through tinder
1.3	Extreme Close Up	Hip Level	Sharpening knives
1.4	Close up	Hip Level	Placing knives on stand
1.5	Close up	Eye Level	Bobby smiling into camera
1.6	Medium	Hip Level	Bobby unlocking door
1.7	Medium Close up	Hip Level	Unpacking shopping
1.8	Insert	-	Suspicious items going in to fridge
1.9	Medium Close Up	Eye Level	Interview style shot of Bobby talking
1.10	Long shot		Poppy walking in park
1.11	Medium	Eye Level	Interview style shot of Poppy talking
1.12	Medium Close Up (Pan)		Shot of files
1.13	Wide Shot (Pan)	High	Women working at computers in an office
1.14	Medium	Eye Level	Interview style shot of Bobby talking (photos in background)
1.15	Close up		Shrine of victims
1.16	Extreme Close Up / Cut in		Photo in shrine
1.17	Close up	Eye Level	Bobby smiling into camera
2.1	Extreme Close Up		Phone rings
2.2	Mid Shot	Eye Level Handheld pan	Bobby answering phone & sitting down
2.3	Mid Shot	Side angle	Bobby hearing call/speaking then smiles
2.4	Extreme Close Up		Phone hanging up (put back in holder)
2.5	Medium Close Up	Eye Level	Bobby speaking “her name is Poppy…”
3.1	Wide shot	Pan	Park
3.2	Long shot		Poppy walking in park
3.3	Mid Shot	Eye Level	Poppy introduces herself (goes to voiceover)
3.4	Wide shot	Over the shoulder	Poppy doing makeup (view of her in mirror)
3.5	Wide shot		Walking and smiling
3.6	Wide shot	Over the shoulder	Poppy on a bed on her phone
3.7	Medium Close Up	Eye Level	“I’ve seen photos of Bobby…”
4.1	Wide shot	Pan	Bobby walking in park
4.2	Extreme Close Up / Cut in		Bobby’s hands (nervous)
4.3	Medium Close Up	Eye Level	Bobby looking over shoulder
4.4	Long shot	handheld	Bobby leaning against wall, Poppy approaches from behind
4.5	Two shot, mid shot		Poppy & Bobby introducing themselves to e/o
4.6	Over the Shoulder (looking at Poppy)		“What are you treating me to?”
4.7	Over the Shoulder (looking at Bobby)		“Its a surprise…”
4.8	Wide shot (Zoom out)	handheld	Backs of Bobby & Poppy walking away
	TITLE SCREEN	Stop motion, lasts <5s
5.1	Establishing shot	Pan	Bobby’s House
5.2	Close up		Bobby sharpening knives
5.3	Mid Shot	Make wine & knives prominent	Bobby setting table
5.4	Extreme Close Up		Knives on table
5.5	Medium Close Up	Pan from knives	Bobby: “here we go”
5.6	Mid Shot	handheld, following behind bobby	Bobby goes to door
5.7	Mid-Long Shot	Knees up, behind poppy	Bobby waiting at door with poison bottle behind her back
5.8	Extreme Close Up		Poison behind her back
5.9	Mid Shot		Poppy putting away poison, door begins to open
5.10	Over the Shoulder	View of Poppy’s face, match on action	Bobby opening door, Poppy greeting
5.11	Over the Shoulder	View of Bobby’s face	“You too..”, pulls her in for hug
5.12	Close up		Bobby closes eyes & smells her hair
5.13	Mid-two shot	Back of Poppy, Bobby is visible  Handheld	Poppy pulls away, Bobby motions her inside & she follows. Door closes
6.1	Mid-Long Shot	View of table with door in background	Couple enter through door, “I have the perfect set up..”, Poppy pours wine
6.2	Mid Shot	Profile of actors from the head of the table	Bobby sits down, “So Poppy..”
6.3	Over the Shoulder	Alternate as couple speak	“I want to know you inside out…”
7.1	Medium Close Up		Bobby sits down on the left, “I think its going really well..”
7.2	Medium Close Up	Poppy sitting on right	Poppy’s interview
8.1	Mid Shot	Back to same profile shot of table	“So where do you see this..” … “prepare the meat”
8.2	Over the Shoulder (looking at Poppy)		“No problem, could you show me the bathroom..”
8.3	Over the Shoulder (looking at Bobby)		“Of course”, turns to walk out door & can see Poppy moving
8.4	Mid-Long Shot	View of wine glasses and Poppy	Poppy hastily pours poison into wine glass & drops bottle on to table
8.5	Extreme Close Up		Poison bottle lying sideways on table
8.6	Mid Shot		Poppy gets up, brushes herself off & follows Bobby
8.7	Mid-Long Shot	handheld, following behind Poppy	Poppy being guided to the downstairs bathroom. Bobby holds open the second door for her, grabs knife. “Let me get that for you”
8.8	Close up		Knife held behind Bobby’s back
8.9	Mid-two shot	Low angle, Poppy standing in front of Bobby	Bobby stabs her, she falls to the ground & shot of Bobby with bloody knife
8.10	Mid Shot	handheld & zoom	Poppy lying on ground with knife in back
8.11	Extreme Close Up		Poppy’s legs being dragged along the floor
8.12	Extreme Close Up	Pan	Poppy's hands being dragged through blood, leaving bloody handprints
9.1	Close up		Bobby puts herbs on top of pasta dish
9.2	Extreme Close up	Pan from pasta then zoom out to shot of Poppy’s framed photo	Insert of recipe “Poppy Puttanesca”
9.3	Mid Shot	Extremely slow zoom	Bobby at head of table. Takes a sip of wine, notices poison bottle, then looks straight at the camera. Head drops. Black