An example of a shot that needed reworking: The pan on the stairs

Originally we planned to have the camera in the corner of the stairwell and have a pan beginning on the open door and moving up looking through the banisters of the stairs, with the girl walking along the landing and the pan stopping on the bathroom door as the girl walks into the bathroom. This shot was going to re-iterate the fact that the front door was left open and create suspense.

During the test shot the shot worked (you can see a clip of this below). However when we got to the actual shoot, we had changed our idea slightly and decided to include the fact that you see a close-up of the girl dropping her keys and you see the front door open again. We felt that it was too obvious to go again to the front door and that this shot would detract from suspense and make it a bit too obvious that something was going to happen. We also had added shots of footsteps on the stairs and the man's hand on the banisters, so we decided to edit the shot slightly to have it starting already on the floor level through the banisters (to create a frame within a frame) which would center the audience's attention on the footsteps and also create tension. The camera would then pan from right to left following the girls movement until she went into the bathroom.

Test Shot:


Final Shot Used:



We were pleased with how the shot turned out in the actual shoot and definitely within the sequence this edited version of the shoot looks much more effective. It also didn't take very long to take the changed shot as it was basically a cropped version of the previous shot which was longer.

Stephanie