Postmodern Style Filming

The filming style we want to create is typical for Thriller films but we also aim to make it very unique at the same time. We are challenging many aspects of the typical handheld footage genre of films.

We are filming the majority of our film with a handheld camera used by one of the actors involved, therefore they have little camera skills, giving the impression that the film is in fact filmed by an amateur student filmmaker. Below is a quote I found from a website about the Blair Witch project that explains how our film will be shot and what effect this creates...

"It was important to make sure this film did not look like there was a third party involved," says Myrick. "We gave the cast a 16mm film cameraand an RCA Hi-8 video camera only. All the lighting at night comes from ENGlights on the video camera. All the audio comes from the camcorder'smicrophone or the DAT recorder. That is the production value we wanted."

Indeed, many of the film scenes are grainy and poorly lit, many of thevideo scenes shake wildly and are hard to follow, and audio quality variesfrom scene to scene. Still, such work is impressive when one considers thatit was shot by non-professionals-the three cast members themselves. "Our DPtaught them how to load the cameras, get exposure and focus, and how tocare for the cameras, while our sound guy taught one of them how to run theDAT machine," says Sanchez. "We didn't want it shot too slick or anything.In the film, they are supposed to be student filmmakers, and we wanted thefootage to look like student footage."

http://www.creativeplanetnetwork.com/dcp/news/behind-blair-witch-project/44043 

However our filming style will be even more unique as we are bringing in a 'third party' and having an extra steady-cam filming Michelle, appearing as a fly on the wall watching the events taking place. There are two reasons why we have decided to go against conventions...

1. We want to showcase to the examiner our camera skills, including framing, lighting etc and we felt that through a hand-held cam we wouldn't be able to do this as effectively as we would have liked. Therefore using both types of filming, it will be clear that our hand held footage is deliberately shaky, bad composition and lighting to create a tense, uneasy feel in contrast to the steady cam which offers an easy way to watch the film and demonstrates typical, good quality camera shots. It also gives the viewer a break from the constant uneasy hand held footage that could potentially put off our target audience from watching the film. Essentially our film will have the best of both worlds. 
2. We want to create a completely unique film. The main aim of the steady camera is to further confuse our audience when watching the film. They will think they understand how a young girl is creating her own documentary but the idea that there is another camera observing will constantly make them question and feel uneasy from never knowing the complete truth of whether 'is this real or not?'  After doing some research into different TV series etc one being 'Supernatural' that have experimented with this style, we found that it actually does work extremely well and also allows the audience an overall view of what is happening. An objective view, looking in on the situation but also a subjective view from the student filmmaker, building an emotional attachment to the character.  It also adds another sense of tension as to who the person filming the filmmaker is, perhaps the ghost himself?

Overall, we are very keen to try this new way of filming. It is a challenge but we think it can be extremely effective. The contrast of deliberate bad filming and deliberate steady filming will compliment each other effectively and create something that is very tense, confusing but engaging for our audience.