Shooting the first scene

On the 21st march we filmed the first scene of the opening of our film. The scene was filmed in the basement of a travel agent of a relative of serhan. When we stepped into the travel agent we observed the basement and gathered ideas on how to shoot what parts of our first scene, there were many rooms in which we could have used, one room was a box room, very small and no windows, these elements were good in order to create a claustrophobic and dark effect, however we decided to used the lower room where we could have used the stairs as a first shot then entering the darkness, it was more effective because of the messy look. This unused room would have representations of Serhan's value.

Before the filming had started, we decided to make a "behind the scenes" film of when applying the make up and when getting the camera ready and discussing what to do. A mobile phone was used to create this small movie. These movies are uploaded onto the group blog.

The first shots of the opening scene included Aslihan walking down the stairs to a private basement where serhan is taped on to a chair and is kept as hostage. Vedat was the cameraman so he wanted to experiment our ideas with the camera.
Vedat took shooting techniques used in films like memento (2000) and trainspotting (1996) as they both captured our interest. Vedat began to shoot a couple of shots of Aslihan (Me) walking down the stairs and then opening the door of the basement, i thought it would be a good idea to concentrate on the "Private" sign on the door to add to the mysterious atmosphere. Lighting wasnt used much as this would give the scene a dark atmospheric feeling which relates to film noir. We also made use of shadows and reflections, i.e. the shadows on the wall when Serhans face is on close up on the last shot before the kitchen scene, and the reflection on the peice of paper (which is meant to be a picture of the fiancee) which was reflected on the glass cabinet door. This was a spontaneous shot as we didnt realise it was in the shot until we rewatched the scene, so we decided to keep it.

We wanted to take some shoulder shots to make it realistic (a technique we had learned as a class when studying soap operas) and also some high angled shots to show that serhan has less power. After Vedat finished shooting the scene we evaluated it as a group. Overall, it was a good first attempt filming as a group as we gave each other ideas and thoughts on how to produce a better looking film. We kept taking into account the representations the different shots had, and how it would produce the desired effect.