Risk Assessment - Miss Georgiou

Risk assessments are created and carried out whilst still in the planning stage before filming has taken place and are important because they identify possible risks so as to ensure the location etc. is safe for all those involved such as the actors as well as the crew. A risk assessment is devised of identifying potential risks which could go wrong during the creation of the thriller, analysing the possible dangers such as impact on those involved and evaluating how exactly these dangers will be resolved as well as considering a backup plan if the hazards cannot be avoided.


During the planning stage of our thriller opening sequence, we constructed a risk assessment to ensure all those involved within our film are kept as safe as possible. My risk assessment can be seen below:

When filming, we encountered no major risks which was a positive outcome as we ensured to remain safe at all times due to the nature of the thriller sequence. Our main concern for the filming was that a major injury could occur as we used a real knife and not a fake one, we told our actor who would be using the knife clearly to make sure the knife didn't come anywhere near the female actor's body so she was not accidentally stabbed. Having said this, the knife caught the actor a little as her top was torn in the scene in which the hit man grabs the victim and prepares to slice her throat. In order to avoid this from happening when re filming, we will ensure that the knife is nowhere near the body when the hit man has to grab his victim while she is washing up. When filming next time, we will ensure that we are more careful during the murder scene when using the knife by making sure that the knife is at a safe distance to the body but isn't too obvious to the camera as we would still want to achieve a realistic effect. When cutting the female victim's throat, we will brief the actor beforehand so that he knows to make the slicing motion in which makeup will be applied in between shots to achieve the sense of realism as well as making sure the knife doesn't come into any contact with the throat. Kate and I will both set about using the tripod more by setting it up on a counter or floor during the murder scene and discuss constantly what we want the shot to look like so we are not confused about what we are filming.

I have learnt that the role of a risk assessment is important when filming as it is never certain that something will go wrong so therefore there will need to be precautions already put in place should any unexpected accidents occur. This will then help to resolve the issue quickly and easily so as not to waste any valuable filming time.