Film Shooting - 17th March 2012

We shot our fight scenes and hopefully final footage on 17th March, 2012, and these are some photos and explanations to show our work. We spent a few hours working on various aspects of this shoot to try and achieve a maximum potential from it.

Preparation

The first step was to get our zombie, Ben Richards, into his zombie makeup. This meant that we had to set all our makeup out on the desk, then layer his face and neck.
I did the makeup for Ben, and I used several steps.



First, I paled his face using white blusher, to create a washed out and dead look. Rather than overdoing the blusher, though, I then used black and grey eyeshadow shades to darken his eyes and create bruised looking skin, also adding a mottled look to his face to try to show the decay that a traditional zombie may have.
The red face paint and flesh coloured lip liner created a bloodied effect with scars that looked healed but marked, showing that the zombie could have had injuries beforehand too.
I used my fingers to smear the paint around Ben's mouth and neck, to try to create the effect that the zombie had been feeding on blood or fighting and drawing blood from another. It was a pretty gruesome effect and when it was on the camera it worked quite well.

Filming

The filming was the obviously the most crucial part of the day, and Ella and I split the work to suit both of our strengths. We both dabbled in working with the camera, and while one filmed, the other directed. I did the aerial shots and some of the steady shots of the fight scenes, as seen below.
The shot on the left (above) is how one of the aerial shots we took of the fight scene was done, and the one on the left (below) was me trying to get a good point-of-view shot of the zombie attack!

This shot was one of the harder ones to get because we had to get down low with the actor, to create an authentic POV shot. We had several attempts at this scene, trying to create a more tense atmosphere than a comedic one.
After several shots, we finally managed to get a good shot of the POV, and it involved this photo of lying on the floor with the camera!


It wasn't just filming that made the shoot work, though. There was a lot of work done with the actors, showing them how to choreograph a good fight scene or stage a grab safely so that nobody got hurt.

 This photo here is one of me showing Robert how to do a safe grab, and how to be on the recieving end. We also worked with Ben to teach them both, so that nobody was injured during filming.

Here, I am showing Ben which angle he needs to be stood at, because without the right angle, the punch would look vey staged. I choreographed the grabs and punches with Ella's directing help from behind the camera, showing a good use of team work.



Overall, my contribution to the filming was that I both filmed some of the footage, including the aerial and POV shots, and also helped to choreograph the fight scenes, working with both actors to teach them new ways to explore 'safe' fighting. I also did the makeup on both characters and helped set up the equipment and direct the other scenes.