Deconstructing the First Shots

Deconstructing the Edited Shots

These first few shots are just the establishing scenes and shots of the rover. In pretty much every shot I stabilised the shakiness of the camera work at around 25-50%. I also changed the colour balance so that the colour is more orange than blue, and this worked perfectly because the contrast of the colours meant that the sky came out a slightly purple colour which will make it easier for Josh when he uses after-effects. There was one shot (the 2nd shot) which actually worked better in reverse, moving towards the pillars and introducing them instead of turning away from it. 

Day 3 of Filming

Day 2 of Filming

Day 1 of Filming

Day 1 of Filming.

We traveled to Bir Zekreet in Josh’s car to check the viability of using this location. After having driven for 2 ⅟₂ hours to get to the Pillars, we realized that getting here may be too difficult, especially considering we found it difficult enough to stick the schedule we had originally made due being free at different times. After discussing other locations and options, we decided that incorporating the Pillars would be a good idea because they really did look ‘other-worldly.’ We shot a variety of rover shots out here, at a selection of angles and distances. We filmed for a few hours, looked over our shot and were satisfied with the filming progress we had made. It wasn’t going to be problematic having a separate location to film any shots with me in them because the majority of the time the camera is facing downwards anyway, meaning buildings surrounding us would not be a problem.

 

Trial Wound

Make-Up Supplies & Make-Up Methods

We decided to use my prior knowledge of make-up and FX Make-Up to try and create wounds and blood. In Qatar, unfortunately you cannot obtain Liquid Latex which is used to create wounds that have some depth and fake blood is very expensive. This resulted in me making my own supplies with simple ingredients.

My supplies altogether included: vaseline, an eye shadow palette with a range of colours, a range of red lipsticks, cheap brushes, corn syrup, red and blue food colouring, flour, wate and foundation.

I was going to make Soft Skin Fauxtex which is a type of Liquid Latex (as seen on http://www.diypics.com/how-make-latex-fx-makeup/ ) however finding tapioca flour and plain gelatin proved very difficult. Therefore I decided to use my own type of Scar Wax which is a mix of corn starch, vasline and foundation. This mixture is simple to use and it blends with the skin well. It also allows you to create some gruesome wounds, cuts and slices easily. There are a few setbacks to using this wax; it is very sticky due to the vaseline which also means it does not dry, therefore if you touch it or knock it on something, it will smudge. It also makes blending bruise tone eye shadow into the wound itself very difficult as it smudges with the applicator.

Making the fake blood was simple. The ingredients for the blood were water, corn syrup, red and blue food colouring and sifted flour. I couldn't find corn syrup in my local shops so I decided to substitute it for maple syrup as it has the same consistency. First you combine one part water with three parts maple syrup, in this instance I used 50ml of water and 150ml of syrup. I then mixed this thoroughly with a fork and then a wooden spoon once the mixture had started to combine and become less sticky. I then started to add the red food colouring one drop at a time. I added a small amount of blue for a more realistic shade. I altered the colour until I was happy with how it shows on my skin. The next step was to slowly add a thickener, in this case, sifted flour. Whisk this until smooth. Remove any lumps of flour with a spoon. I then needed to adjust the colour slightly as the flour had caused the blood to look lighter.

First Shoot

First Shoot

The first shoot we did was on location in the "Singing Sand Dunes" in the middles of the desert. We arrived at midday with the intention of filming a lot of the rover perspective shots. As you can see from the picture, the lighting was not perfect for the types of shots we wanted. After looking at the shots, we have realized that the golden hour would have been a better time as everything in sight would be bathed in a yellow/orange hue. This colour could have been enhanced in post production as well to make the setting feel more like a foreign planet. We also realized that this particular part of the desert was not as barren and empty as we would have liked. If you looked off into the distance you could see small structures and oil rigs which completely ruined the illusion that the film was set in outer space. In future shoots, we would definitely use another location.

Another issue we had was the equipment overheating. It was extremely hot on the day and I had to give my GoPro a break so it wouldn't overheat. The equipment we had included a DSLR, a GoPro, a boom mic, a digital camera, a tripod and a rotating selfie stick. The sun made it hard to see exactly whet we were shooting but we had a general idea. It was at this point where the main problem came to surface. Our rover which we showed in our previous posts would not drive on the rough terrain. Seeing as this was our main purpose of that particular shoot, we had to try and improvise.

One way we thought we could get around the problem was by getting me to move the rover manually with a large stick. We genuinely tried for half an hour to get this shot to work but it unfortunately did not. There was always either the stick or my head in the shot. This shoot has made us want to reevaluate our film idea as the issues with the rover and setting proved that this idea may be difficult to pull off in the allocated time given by the exam board. While we want to keep the sci-fi genre and general idea, we may need to change the amount of rover shots included and some plot points.  

Building The Rover

Building The Rover

To create the rover for our film, we used an old remote control car that Josh bought a few years ago. It does not seem to have any performance issues at this time and only needed it's batteries replacing. The car normally looks like a sports car with a neon green skin, but we took it off to reveal it's inner wiring. We think this made the car look more realistic and makes it fit in better with our genre. While we were happy with the way it looked, we felt that it needed something else added to it to make it look less like a remote controlled car. So, we decided to add a GoPro camera to the front of the car.

The GoPro was useful for two reasons, with the main reason being it's recording capabilities. We are going to use this camera for most of the POV shots in the film, so it's placement was important. We decided to place it at the front of the car so it could get the widest shot possible and could also tilt up and down easily. The camera also served as a focus point for the rover, where a lot of shots would end up focusing on. The lens almost looks like an eye and gives our rover a human feel.

(This post was written by Josh as he has the idea and built the rover)