Film Planning - Change of Idea

The original idea for the film appeared too complex for the small time scale and equipment available for use, so the idea had to be changed so that it was more practical for the task in hand.

The first change was the location of the story. Instead of having the wooded area at night, it was changed to a suburban house, but it was still set at night for the before mentioned reasons. Lighting inside was much easier to control than it was outside, and a lot of time was spent setting up each shot so that lighting was effectively used. In most cases the lighting is from one side of the main character, allowing one side to stay in darkness and mystery, and also hiding the protagonist.

Having shots at the window allows the same effect as the protagonist in the woods of the original idea, but is a much easier effect to achieve. This also allows the protagonist to be hidden a lot more than in the original story line, as the the natural darkness conceals a lot more of the body than an artificial filter.

Also, audience feedback told me that the eventual day to night effect filter did not look as convincing as first planned. I believe this to be mainly down to the lighting involved in the process of creating a night effect. The lighting needed to be just right so that the colours of the natural surroundings were not too vibrant during filming, and this was not possible with such a small budget and very little lighting equipment available.