IN THE FIRST PERSON
Filming in the first person - or 'point of view' (POV) filming - is one of the foundations of editing taken in its broadest sense. Many, many shots in a film are showing us events (or details) from the perspective of one or more of the characters. In this project, however, we were practicing more what I suppose you could call 'inherently point-of-view filming: shots which, even without the context of the editing, are obviously showing us the viewpoint of a particular character. The kind of shots which are used most often in horror/slasher/thriller movies.
Stanley Kubrick gettin' some tasty POV
The POV shot can create a very intimate style (often uncomfortably so), and is obviously quite immersive for the viewer - placing him/her in the thick of the action. But its popularity in genera movies lies in the fact that its a very simple way of showing viewers the action whilst concealing 'something' - a character whose identity we wish to remain hidden; a monster whose exciting and original appearance we're saving for the final (or more often, whose underwhelming and ropey appearance does not bare extensive screen time), etc, etc.
For this college experiment I and my group chose the horror/slasher genera (of course). We found a great location in the glass-tunnel overpasses on Union Street (Plymouth). I gave the 'killer' yellow washing-up gloves (a rather cleaver joke-reference to Giallo) and made sure the last shots of my character being strangled were sufficiently lurid. The 'tongue-out' thing was pinched from Polanski (who I think pinched it from Hitchcock) - for me its grotesque and darkly comic. The idea of the killer painting a number '9' in ketchup didn't quite come off, but I added a lovely retro red tint to the final shots which I feel successfully distract from this point.
I added scratches to the film and a soundtrack composed of many, many fragments (we didn't record use-able sound on location); it was designed to sound like a low-budget, 70s horror.
Filming in first-person is a great way to skimp on things like costuming, choreographing, actor presence, special effects (if it were a monster movie), etc...
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