The Bag Swap: Details

We had a task to make a short thriller movie about two people swapping bags. We had to think of a storyline to go with it, which we've done in class and it never took long. After we had to sign a small contract for the equipment(camera and tripod) and we got it.

We hired some actors to act in the film because none of us wanted to act in the short movie. The plot of this short movie is this: One guy is waiting for the other guy to come to swap each other's bags, which he does, then the swap happens, this might give the audience a mysterious feeling as at one point we film from a point of view shot of someone spying on the deal happening. After the swap occured, the two actors walk away.

Setting: We decided to film away from the college because too many people from our class were filiming in the college, plus the college doesn't look thrilling for a bag swap to happen. Our setting was outside a metal scrapyard, which we thought was suitable for a short movie like this because it was dark and dirty around that area. We had permission to film in the warehouse for the point of view shot to make the short movie look thrilling!

Camera: At the start of the short movie we see shots of the city to show it's in a city, then the camera is facing on one of the windows of the rusty warehouse, then it slowly moves down to one of the actors, showing a medium shot of him. We've decided to film like this so people can know it's a thrilling place. After the cameraman pans the other actor, following him where he goes, then it switches to a point of view shot from behind the warehouse. After that, we go close up on their faces while they're checking the bag. Then we see an over the shoulder shot of one of the actors, after that we switch back to the point of view shot from the warehouse, I think that this POV shot can make the audience feel suspicious of what's happening and it makes it more thrilling.