Analysis of Filming - Part 2

I have now filmed the second part of my trailer this weekend. I have made a lot of changes to my original plan because once I actually started filming, I came up with new ideas that I thought would work better; also, if I had included all the clips I wanted then my trailer would be too long and it is very important that this is kept as a teaser trailer rather than a full theatrical one.
I decided to cut out clips 4 and 5 which were:

4. Jade hammering on the door screaming: “Help! Somebody!” (2 seconds)

5. Jade to Tom: “You need help Tom, you’re sick!” Tom is standing in the doorway of a basement with Jade at the bottom of the stairs (3 seconds)

This was because I thought that clip 4 would look comical and I filmed clip 5 but I did not think it was very effective and I could not get the lighting right:



Therefore I decided to proceed with clip 6:

6. Flashing images of Tom with blood round his mouth and lunging with a knife. (4 seconds)

I was anxious about these two clips as there is a certain degree of violence implied and I was determined for it not to look comical. However I needed the element of violence to convey the genre of my film to my target audience.
Surprisingly, filming these two short clips was not as difficult as I had thought as by this time, my brother had better acting skills; he did not laugh or get nervous once I had started filming. However, there were some health and safety issues I had to consider before filming these clips:

1. I was going to be using a real kitchen knife for one of the clips so it was essential that it was handled with care and that I stood at a safe distance when my brother lunged with the knife as I was filming.

PICTURE OF KNIFE

2. I was also going to be using stage blood for the other clip to smear around my brother's mouth. Most stage make up/solutions are relatively safe and I had bought the stage blood from a reputable company but I could not rule out the possibility of an allergic reaction; especially as the skin around the mouth area is very sensitive. Therefore, I did a 'spot test' on my brother; a spot test is when a small amount of the solution is rubbed onto an area of skin and then left for a couple of hours. When the waiting time is up the solution must be washed off and if the skin has no sign of irritation then it is safe to proceed. This set my back by 3 hours but it was necessary to do or my brother may not have been able to continue with the trailer if he had been allergic, which would have set me back at least a week if not more.

Here are my two clips of 'Tom' with blood round his mouth and lunging with a knife.





I was pleased with the end result of these clips; I only had to do about 3 takes for each one, here are some clips I didn't use because they had one or more flaws:



I did not use this clip for my final project because my brother looks as if he is going to laugh near the end; this was my first take.



I did not use this clip either because my brother did not turn his head fast enough and he did not have the same aggressive look that he did on my final take; I wanted these clips to be very short so it was no good him turning his head too slowly.

Editing -

Editing these clips together was very simple as I did not have any captions to add; all I had to do was trim them both down like I did before and add blackouts in between and at the end of each clip:





The filming and editing took 1 hour and 30 minutes altogether. I now have 23 seconds of film and I shall resume filming the final part of my trailer next weekend.