Risk Assessment

It was important that before we started filming, we carried out a risk assessment. We didn't want anything to go wrong so by assessing the situation first we were able to reduce the risk.

• The first risk came from filming a lit candle being blown out. Obviously this was a fire hazard, so to make sure nothing caught on fire, we cleared the area and ensured that the camera or any other equipment were not too close to the candle. We only kept the candle lit when we were filming it to prevent anyone from accidently knocking. 
• Another hazard came from when we filmed the attack on my character. Michael, played by my brother, had to pull on my character Amy's hair and drag her backwards, and so there was clearly a risk of me getting actually injured. We realised that there would be no way of faking the hair pulling, so to make sure I didn't injure myself we changed the shot slightly so that you could only see a hand pull on the hair and I was then dragged out of shot. This meant I was only visible for a second and the 'attack' didn't need to be forceful at all - as soon as I was out of shot I was completely in control.
• We filmed a lot of our film outside, which brought two risks. The first was that if it rained, the camera could get wet and potentially damaged. To stop this from happening, we made sure that on the few occasions that it did rain during filming, we covered the camera with an umbrella to protect it.
• The second hazard is the terrain in which we were working on. There were muddy hills, ditches, uneven paths etc that could have caused one of us to lose our footing and injure ourselves or drop the equipment that we were carrying. All we could do to reduce this risk was watch where we were going and check that we were taking the safest route. 
• Lastly, I had to lie down in some bushes in order to create the illusion that I had died (my character in the film dies).  The area we wanted to use was covered in sharp branches and stinging nettles so to avoid any injury I wore my coat to cover as much skin as possible. I did get a tiny injury from a stinging nettle but obviously it wasn't serious so it was okay.