The Bag Swap !!!!

We were given a task to create a suspenseful short clip that adapted all of the techniques that we were taught in class. But the main purpose of this task was to practice using the camera equipment, just to get a brief idea of how it will be when it comes to creating our thriller!

The original story line consisted of someone reading a news paper, however this idea quickly changed when our original actor did not show up on the day. So we decided to change our idea and create a short sequence that evolved around the idea of a woman’s bag being stolen, we called it ‘The Bag Swap’.

There were several problems that occurred on the day the first one being what I previously mentioned; our actor (group member) was not present on the day . The second was that we only had 21 minutes to film, in a packed corridor where people frequently ran into our shots. This delayed time and limited us in terms of the amount of shots that we were able to use when it came to editing. 

So ....What would we do differently?!

• Give ourselves enough time to plan out our idea
• Create more than just one idea just in case someone in the group does not show up
• Ensure that everyone in the group attends the lesson
• Make sure that we film in a quiet and empty location
• Quickly put up the tripod and all of the equipment
• Time ourselves per shot

What made this clip effective was the camera shots and angles. The first shot shows a woman walking through a corridor, we did this to enable our audience to understand the narrative. The second is of a man walking up the stairs we used a tracking shot to delay time, to keep the audience anxious. We then used a hand held camera shot of his feet to show him creeping up on the woman, whilst watching it gives you this emotion of fear and again anxiety. We then did a close up shot of the woman opening the door, if you look closely you can see the shadow of the man peering over her and then suddenly the action begins. Something that started off so subtle ended with something dramatic.

I hope you enjoyed the clip!!