Health and Safety

Health and safety will be very important when shooting our film opening. This is due to our actors having a fight scene, which we will have to film safely but realistically. We will do this by shooting with a zoom lens as it gives us a compressed image, making people look much closer together than they actually are.

This will enable the actors to mime hitting each other but still look like they are actually fighting. We recorded a draft fight scene with our main actor:

In order to achieve this we taught the actor the choreography and then mimed out the actions with the camera being placed to make the punches look like they actually connect.

In order to avoid alarming people, we have chosen to film in an enclosed area, out of the view of any members of the public. We have also chosen to completely cover up the gun props we will use by keeping them in bags until we are at the location. This will ensure that no one is alarmed while we move to the location.

We will practise the fight scene slowly, several times with the actors before we film, in order to ensure complete safety as both actors will know exactly what is going to happen. We will also use a crash mat for the part of the fight where the main character slams his enemy to the floor.

This mat will be used to ensure that the actors can safely appear to hit the ground. We will film them, first, running into the tackle, then we will film them tackling onto the crash mat and finally we will record them holding themselves a couple of inches above the ground and then falling. Then we will edit them all together to make the tackle appear real, while still making sure not to harm the actors.

When shooting the actual opening we will ensure that the mat does not get into the frame at any point.

At the end of the fight scene, the protagonist kills his enemy with a rock found near where they are lying. In order to avoid harming the actor playing the antagonist, we have cut a rock shape out of a car wash sponge and painted it with non-toxic paint to look like a rock. Doing this will allow us to safely use the prop as the supposed murder weapon. We will also add a non-toxic fake blood to the rock to give the appearance of the rock inflicting a wound.

These are the unfinished rocks

We will also have bottles of water on the set to ensure that the actors do not get dehydrated. This is important but is often overlooked. We will also be providing food for the actors.

Nathan