CONSTRUCTION: FILMING

22nd November

On this day, we filmed the main basis of our trailer. We filmed in Esher woods. We thought this location was best as the woods provided us with an eery setting with natural sunlight. Additionally, when people think about the woods they think about animals and dogs being walked. This reflects the themes in our film where protesters in animal masks are in the woods, on the loose. 

The filming was successful as Esher woods was the perfect location to film at, as it allowed us to film at strange, eery locations in a local area. The woods has secluded areas which were handy to film in as it made the viewer feel isolated and helpless, as no one was around to help the 4 boys. Additionally, it was a nice day on the 22nd of November which meant the sun was shining on the actors, giving a sense of natural light. On top of this, there were large sticks and logs around in the wood. This was helpful as we needed something to make a large noise, so we hit a log against a tree to make a bang noise. This scene was the hardest to time so we needed a lot of logs as they kept on breaking. The large abundance of wood there allowed us to do this. 

The downside of filming in the woods was that there were constantly people there, mostly walking their dogs. This meant we had to wait until they got out of shot until we could start filming, as if there were normal public civilians walking around at the time of filming, the sense of urgency and danger would have been destroyed, and would have looked too casual. 

1st December

On this day of filming, we went to the car park which lead into Esher Woods. We needed to film at this location as we were filming Alessia Stefanutti, one of the actors, sitting in the car. The scene we were filming was Alessia in the car being oblivious of two masked men sitting behind her, and one standing in front of her car distracting her from the two behind her. This included reaction shots of Alessia seeing the men in her car and an over the shoulder shot of Alessia sitting in the car.

Filming in the car park went well due to it being Wednesday, the woods were fairly quiet meaning there were no cars driving into the car park when we were filming, allowing us to start shooting the scenes on our own time. Additionally, as the car park is surrounded by woodlands, it has an eery look to it. This builds on the film being a horror film and complies with the scary themes.

One of the downsides was that it started raining for a part of the filming, meaning we had to sit in Alessia's car and wait for the rain to stop, as water would have got on the camera lens and make the footage look blurry and unprofessional.

Aside from filming in Alessia's car, the group also filmed the protest scene for the trailer, on the road leading up to Garsons Farm, from Esher Woods. We had to find an area with minimal foot and car traffic as we were letting off flairs for the protest scene, and we didn't want to cause any unrest in the area, of locals worrying about what we were doing. The filming included a front shot and canted angle shot of the 4 masked protesters wearing animal masks, giving the viewer a complete representation of what they looked like and how daunting they were. 

A positive from filming was that there was no rain at the time of filming the protest scene, meaning that we could set off the flairs without them going out, as rain would have put them out. 

A negative from filming the protest scene was that there were actually a few cars coming up and down the road, meaning we had to wait for people to pass, as for the filming we were doing, it required absolute isolation on the road.