Filming - in the carpark

During this filming in the car-park we kept the same sequence of shots throughout all our filming which was:

1. Woman turning off the car and opening the door.


2. Stepping out of the car.


3. Shutting the door and walking away.


4. Kidnapper comes along behind her as she walks, following her.


5. Woman drops her keys and kidnapper puts his hand over her mouth.

These shots were filmed at different angles and levels each time so when we edited the footage, we were able to choose and cut the shots applicably. This was a simple sequence making it easy to follow and repeat accordingly.

For all of our scenes we managed to steady the camera well meaning there was no camera shake allowing for a good quality film. However there was a problem with one shot in particular whilst filming the kidnapping. We found it relatively difficult to produce a tracking shot without professional equipment. This shot consists of the woman and the kidnapper (secretly following her) walking beside a random car, then the woman drops her keys and the kidnapper grabs her, covering her mouth. At this point the camera rotates tracking around the car to block the characters so the audience don’t see the action of the kidnapping. The camera continues to rotate around the car returning to allow the place where the characters were standing to be in view, but they are gone. This gives the audience the impression that the woman has been taken away by this man. Our first attempt of this shot failed as we tried filming by hand and moving around the car, but this was shaky and the plot became unclear.
As a result of this unsuccessful attempt of a tracking shot, we arranged to meet again and film using my moped as a base for the camera to sit on so we could push the camera on the bike around the car hoping it would shoot it smoothly as we now had wheels. But again this was unsuccessful as the pushing was not as easy as we thought and the level of the camera was too low. Finally we decided to try holding the camera in a car filming out the window whilst someone drove the car smoothly and slowly around the action. We did this twice for accuracy and when we came to edit it, it turned out to be a great shot which looked effective and worked steadily when rotating this tracking shot.