Filming 2nd scene

Last night we filmed the second scene of our thriller which was set in Alex's house. We used a few different sets, one outside the front of the house which was a car scene, using Alex's dad as an actor to drive the car. The others were set in the living room of his house and also the bottom of the stairs.
As we were on a time limit due to the time of day and the natural light we needed in the film, we had to do the car scene first. I acted in the scene, as well as Bea and Alex's dad with Alex filming. We took several shots of the same scene, varying the movement of the camera and the angle. Mostly this scene was shot at eye level, so we could capture both mine and Bea's facial expression and body language. The costume of this scene was thought out so that I looked a lot more dressed up in comparison to Bea. This reflected that she was staying at my characters house so she didn't have the clothes with her that she would have at her own house. After doing roughly 10 versions of this shot we felt we had enough variety in the shots to choose from so began our second scene at Alex's house.
The second scene was shot through patio doors from the outside into the living room where you could see Bea's character. We had Jack Storer play the part of the main antagonist in the scene, using an over the shoulder shot of Jacks character outside and looking in through the patio door's at Bea's character. Shooting it from this view will give the audience unrestricted narrative as Bea's character can not see the antagonist. The effect of doing this was to create enigma, getting the audience to start asking questions about who this person is and what is he going to do to her. We had to wait until it got reasonably dark to shoot this scene to portray that it would be night, however we wanted to still be able to see the antagonists silhouette standing outside watching in. The main part of this scene was the protagonist (Bea's character) getting a call from the antagonist (Jack's character) and not knowing who it is. Bea played the part really well, creating a tense and really believable atmosphere. The phone call ends with The antagonist character saying "you know who I am, I'm back" and the protagonist throwing the frantically throwing the phone. We didn't use any of the special lighting for this as we wanted it to look just like an everyday living room. After this we took the camera inside to shoot this scene from different angles and see which would look best. As we were filming one scene I was standing to the side and noticed that an interested shot would be behind Bea's character, but looking at her facial expression directly in the mirror so we could get the true effect of the scene. However we didn't get enough time to shoot this shot so when we complete all the rushes hopefully this shot will be included. We also took shots of Bea's character sitting on the sofa, reading a magazine before the phone call. This show's that before the call it is a completely normal situation and there is no stress or tension in the scene but this short phone call changes that.
The next shot we filmed was in Alex's living room, however we used hardly any lighting, apart from a torch light. This was of our main antagonist character (Jack Storer) In this scene I did the make-up which involved putting the red contact lens' in for both the antagonists and darkening under the eyes. Bea styled the hair into a more rugged messy type look that would suit the character they were playing. In this shot we wanted him to to look up slowly revealing the eye which is the most important part. We filmed this in several ways, using a dolly, having the camera static and using a slow zoom in, and also hand held. With the torch it gave it a very eerie effect, which was what we had hoped for. The only small issue we had with this scene was that we couldn't see the eye very well and so might have to manipulate this in post production.
The next shot was the last one we filmed and was of Bea's character being ambushed by Jack Sadler's character. We used a key light in this scene, however it was quite low key as we want to connote that this is a thriller throughout the whole sequence. We filmed this from a high angle looking down on the protagonist character to make her look more vulnerable. This scene's main function was to build suspense, with the light not working and then her peering up the stairs expecting something to be up there. This leads to the shock of the antagonist coming out of the door in the hall and putting a bag over her head.
Overall the second part of our filming went very well and having done a small amount of filming, acting and also directing I think I had a varied role throughout.