Test Shoot Review

To review our final product, we watched it as a group and discussed our thoughts together, as well as collecting advice from other friends and our teacher.

Overall, we all agreed that our plan translated very well onto film as it looks very similar to what we had in mind already, and the structure itself makes perfect sense for a typical horror film introduction - meaning it told you enough about what you needed to know (the girl is running from the killer) but still created a lot of mystery and raised questions (why is she being chased? who is this killer?).

The only real glaring problem with our test shoot was its length, which came down to only one minute compared to our minimum length of two minutes. This was due to a variety of reasons, including the time we had to film the entire thing and the fact that we had to significantly shorten the first half of our sequence in order to allow us enough time to film the entire second half, and also because we were not able to film our desired hot wiring sequence, instead resorting to simply picking the car's lock - a much simpler action that wouldn't take up as much time.

We also agreed that, whilst we definitely had the right idea for pacing, our first half should definitely be much longer as we follow the survivor in some form of equilibrium before the action kicks in, and similarly, the girl should stay tormented by the hunter in the shack for a little longer before she gets back up to check he's gone. 

This came down to simply building more obvious tension through quieter or more drawn out shots, however, I did find that a few friends I showed this to somewhat shrunk back in the moments just before the jumpscare as the survivor opens the door to check she is safe, with two of them whispering something along the lines of 'oh god I know I'm about to get jump-scared', which ruled our efforts to recreate a horror movie jumpscare a success.

We all think that our general narrative is fairly self explanatory, although the fact that she is trying to break into a car for survival resources seemed a bit unclear simply due to costume and setting, it is pretty clear to see that she is being hunted by a killer who just so happens to travel around on a motorcycle and is running/hiding from him in a shack she comes across.

One thing we and nearly everyone I showed this shoot to agreed on was the fact that it looks visually great, obviously a lot of it is due to my camera quality (which I treasure greatly) but it also came down to the individual settings for each shot, as well as the range of angles we used; I am particularly happy with the second to last shot looking up at the hunter with his "battle axe" (umbrella).

However, we decided to incorporate more shaky handheld footage, which Joy very cleverly suggested could be synched with the volume levels of the motorcycle sounds (the louder the revving, the shakier the shot) in order to allow the viewer to more closely experience the survivor's fear.