Shoot day reflection

So we completed our filming last week and thankfully it all went pretty smoothly. We decided to film our white scene first to guarantee the right kind of sun exposure/natural light. We completely cleared out our friend’s bedroom and made it creepy and sterile by covering the floor in white sheets and removing the mattress from the bed, leaving just the skeletal frame. This gave the room quite an eerie feel that was reminiscent of a mental ward or isolation cell- perfect. We got our model ready and the white dress (by Lauren Christensen, 2nd year fashion design) was absolutely gorgeous. It was ideal for our shoot as it was innocent yet powerful with geometric hemlines and obtruding panels- extremely similar to William Tempest’s work. We got our model to twitch and stare into the camera a lot; we also got her to not only sit and lie on top of the bed frame, but also underneath it to enforce the idea of entrapment with no escape.  We also got her to stare into a television, which was fuzzing, tracing her outline that was reflected in it. This gave a really creepy and disturbing effect that looked great on film. Emma did some freestyle shooting to get great angles and I used the tripod to get steady shots and close ups. We focused on short clips of our model in different positions rather than long, documentary shots. This scene was aimed to capture a more innocent side of our demented model, whilst also creating an unnatural mood with her body language and snappy looks towards the camera.

The set for the white scene

The second scene focused on a more empowering entrapment with rapid, frantic shots of our model trying to escape the scene around her. The outfit was a billowing black maxi dress with exaggerated shoulders, created using lots of black organza and a few rolled up t-shirts. This was extremely reminiscent of Tempest’s consistent array of sculpted, sweeping black dresses seen throughout all of his collections. We darkened the sockets of our model’s eyes and gave her some black, lacy gloves to wear, as we wanted to do a lot of hand shots. The location was the archways under Rochester railway bridge. It was perfectly rustic with sprouts of marsh and decaying, crumbling bricks. This scene captured a lot of distorted positions and quick hand movements. We managed to get some stunning beauty shots and used our space really well, making our model crawl, arch her back and lean in towards the walls. This scene was a bit less innocent and much darker. We wanted to capture a more demented, unnatural side to our model, making her appear less like a human and more like an unworldly creature.

Second location, Rochester railway bridge

Shooting in second location, black outfit

The final location was a long, steep alleyway with bricked walls and sprouts of marsh, which pushed the confined/trapped ideology of our film. We used a monochrome outfit extremely coherent to Tempest’s A/W 08 collection, which consisted of a Victoriana white shirt and tapered, black trousers with huge, draping bows. It looked extremely effective with our model’s long black wig and haunting complexion. I set up my camera on the tripod and kept it stationary at the bottom of the alleyway to capture the entire length. Emma freestyled again to get close-ups and detailed shots. This was a simple part of the shoot that entailed our model to walk in a distorted way down the alleyway, from left to right. We had close ups of her (bare) feet and hands running along the wall. At the end of the alleyway we got her to crouch down and reach both sides of the walls with her arms to make her appear to be trying to break free, escape. The idea was to speed this scene up quite a lot to recreate the effect used in The Ring (unnatural, jutting movement).

Shooting in third location, alleyway, monochrome outfit

When we finished we went home and re-created the footage that we had test shot (mirrored images flashing) before, directing our model to slowly edge towards the camera.

All in all, I was extremely happy with our shooting. The styling and makeup looked amazing and the locations fitted in with our idea really well. Our model was extremely patient and we had no trouble shooting or with the locations/cameras. The footage looked great when we played it back and we were happy and proud of what had been achieved.