Day Five - Filming

Today we filmed the ballet studio 'Bodens' with the ballet girl (me) in her dance studio dancing around before she makes her way home, unfortunately "bumping" into Billy, her stalker. We realised since we deleted the last scenes of 'who's next' with his next victim we could focus on the ballet studio, really emphasising the fact that this girl is a ballerina (like the figure in the music box) not just an average girl getting raped. We are hoping we can link the music box sound with the ballerina's dance music, as this would be a vital motif for the film leading into being a diagetic sound in different scenes to make the link between the music box girl and the ballerina girl.

Firstly we started off by filming some shots of Elle's feet, going on point. These shots were either long shots or extreme close ups of her feet. We decided to do loads of different ballet techniques and movements as we thought that more would be better than less and somehow, either at the start of our film, with the quick transitions or with the help of fading transitions can show how she got from each shot.

We then filmed some long shots of the ballerina (me) spinning. We started zoomed in and then slowly zoomed out to reveal the girl. The reason why we did this was because since inside the music box there is a ballet dancer spinning, with a zoom transition I will mimic what the ballet dancer inside the box is doing. This is to help show the audience that the box is sort of like a voodoo and it controls the ballerina.

Following on from this shot, we did a extreme close up/canted angle of her falling. This shot would come after the shot we previously filmed of Billy slamming the box down. This also proves that the box is a "voodoo doll" and that Billy has some kind of control or power over her. We also filmed a lot of split jumps through the air. We may not include these shots but we thought if we had more time left over it would make sense to have more footage that shows that she's a ballet dancer. These shots were pan shot follows across the whole room. You could also see me through the mirror. This shot was difficult to film because there was no way we could pan across the whole room in the mirrors without the camera and tripod being seen. Luckily in the room there was a pole in the middle which was just big enough for one of us to stand behind with the camera and pan across without being seen. Also as seen in the picture, we filmed some "bar work" which where she completed various ballet moves. We may not have time to put these in our film but we thought we might aswell, as we may end up using some in the fast transition start.

Then we filmed again from behind the pole but of me spinning and doing stretches and the splits. We then zoomed into the mirror to show a closer long shot of her (me). This shot is good as the audience is not looking at her directly, they are looking at her through the mirror which also gives the audience a sense that she is being watched. I think that this shot makes up for the fact that we couldn't get hold of Billy so we could, unfortunatly, not use the amazing shot of when I bends down Billy will appear in the mirror, unseen by the girl.

Finally we realised that our next shot after this was the ballerina walking out of 'Esporta', so we needed some kind of real life transition to show that she's left one place and entering another one. We then panned her picking up her bags and leaving the room. We filmed extreme close up's of her turning the lights off and grabbing the doors. What we have realised though is that we can only use one extreme close up, either the switching off of the lights or the lift, from previous filming, as her nails are black in one and fake in the other. But this would not be a problem as we already have too much footage to deal with.

We are soo happy that we have finished filming, and learnt soo much along the way. We just cannot wait to see the finishing product!