Reflection of Test shoot

 

While the test shoot went smoothly, there were some changes that needed to be made so we could make it more realistic and play more into the horror conventions.

The plot was clear, but also unclear at the same time - part of this was intentional as its a simple theme but also very mysterious, the narrative is clear because its a simple theme, a man is walking with his dog and starts seeing horrifying things pinned to trees and weird symbols marked In the ground and carved into trees, he then comes across a complete massacre where he stumbles upon a mutilated body and gets killed himself. We leave some to the imagination as we never show the creature/ being thats committing the attacks, the only representation of this is the high angle shoots that imply he's being watched. However some on this was unintentional, as we didn't have much time to get all the props we needed so the symbols in the ground need some more work to make them look more obvious and threatening but this will be sorted by the time we film the actual sequence.

There were some changes that needed to be made, but a lot also went well - we had a good actor (Tom) who was playing the man walking through the woods and this helped us know who to cast and also gave us a good idea of how the scene would play out, for example when to do close up shots and can help the actor who we cast in the real thing to know an appropriate reaction. We could also improvise well enough with the symbols, dead body and sound effects which was helpful. We were filming on an iPhone, so the quality wasn't as good as it would be in the real thing but we got some good angles and this was helped massively by the editing, which I think was carried out very well.

We need to change how we build tension throughout, we can do this by playing into the dog character more, and because we didn't have any fake blood, special effects or a mutilated body it was obviously a lot less scary than we would have hoped. We also decided on changing the ending shot from the man running away to him being striked and killed which will play more into the horror conventions. There's also work that needs to be done on making the symbols more obvious, and even adding more details (old candles, colour in the pentagrams on the tree, hair, bones & teeth could be added to make it obvious to the audience that this wasn't just a killing but a massacre. 

The test shoot was just under 2 minuets and with these changes I think it will be developed further and we will reach the minimum time.

The sequence is engaging, but this will be amplified by editing, music and the props we'll use.