Reflection of test shoot

Having filmed our first version of our thriller idea we definitely have a more precise idea of what we need to improve. The genre is easily identifiable and through the use of the bomb and surroundings it should be obvious to the audience it’s an opening to a thriller. We did however find the pace of our opening doesn’t quite work it is currently a bit to slow which is bad as it results in a lack of tension which can often leave the viewer uninterested. As well as this our opening is much to short and is only a minute and 8 seconds when it needs to be much closer to 2 minutes long. 

To give it more tension and add anticipation we need to make it faster by adding a larger variety of shot’s which will help to give us an opening scene in which the climax rises. However even though it lacks in tension at the moment our two characters being the girl strapped to the bomb and the police women storming in are made to be clear so the audience understand the situation and who is involved.  

The camera angles in which we used have some good qualities but we need to develop further and incorporate them which should also help with the pace improving  in our final film adding more tension overall. In filming our test shoot we learnt that in our final shoot we want the police officer who storms into the room at the end to come through a door which is located directly opposite to the girl strapped to the bomb as it will make it more dramatic as we can get some good camera shots such as the over the shoulder shot so we see what it would look like from the victims perspective. The second major thing we discovered through filming our test shoot is that we need to add sound, not only to add the tension but also to help the actor out as it’s much easier if we pre- record it so when it comes to filming we can play it aloud and they themselves can hear the police sirens and the general chaos of the outside sound. Also meaning it is more likely to be realistic then if we just add it in the editing phase which leaves us facing the struggle of matching the sound to the actor. 

I think once we add further shots to the sequence the tension should come with that. The thing that has worked well is the two characters remain clear and it is obvious to the viewer the situation that is unravelling before them. Overall I think we have a good basic idea and with the introduction of sound while filming and more shots we will have the opportunity to build real tension making a good opening scene for a thriller.