Sunday 6th March: -Present at shoot: Me, Josh, Sam & Matty
On this day, my group and I shot a large section of our film. We shot all of the bedroom and bathroom scenes at Matty's house. We started filming at approximately 12 noon and finished at 4.30pm, although this was a fairly long amount of time, it was well worth the time and effort we put in.
We stuck to the story board and didn't need to change any shots or angles as everything ran smoothly. Sophie acted well for us and we only had to do a few takes on each scene apart from the ones more technically tricky. I had a problem with panning when tracking Sophie walking from the bathroom door to the mirror, this was mainly because there was a jump at the beginning of the pan which may have been caused by the confined space I was in, as I had to set the tripod up in the bath. The other problem we had with this shot was that the door needed to be part way open in order in the exact place in order for us to not make a continuity error; this meant that when Matty clapped the clapperboard he had to also stay in the bathroom which meant there was even less space and he had to avoid kicking the tripod whilst I was panning.
Overall, filming on this sunday went well and I was pleased with what we had shot.
Wednesday 9th March: -Present at shoot: Me, Josh, Sam & Matty
On this day, my group and I used our 2 hours of lesson time to film the scenes against the black curtain at the beginning of our film. Sophie came into school for us and we got all of the shots done that we wanted to. We made one change to one shot because we felt at the time that it was a good idea and added to the effect of the madness of the girl in our film. We had a few problems we had to overcome but I feel that we overcame them well.
The first problem we came up against was that we set up our equipment in the drama studio where we could use the spot lights and the black curtains, we got everything set up and our drama teacher came in to teach his lesson as he had forgotten that we had booked the room. This meant we had to move to the lecture theatre and change our plan slightly, we used the back of the red curtain at the front of the stage as it is black on the opposite side. This meant that we then needed to set up a 3 point lighting system which took extra time up. After we had done this we needed to set up the rails for the dolly to run along. The shot which we changed was the first part of the match on action where the girl screams into the camera, and this was due to the fact that after changing location we suddenly had a bright idea.
We felt that instead of the girl only screaming into the camera lense, she could turn around afterwards if we opened the curtains and scream at the empty audience in the theatre and we could just graphic match this to her back instead of to her face like in our storyboard. This to us felt like a better idea because by screaming to an empty audience she is showing that her madness is growing.
The final problem which we had was caused by the lighting against the white clothing Sophie was wearing. The light was reflecting too much, meaning that the camera wasn't picking up Sophie's face because of the glare, we needed to play around with the positioning of the lights because if they were too far away there was shadow on one side of the face, however if they were too close her face couldn't be seen.
Overall shooting was successful and although we had problems in the beginning we managed to get what we wanted done.
Monday 21st March: -Present at shoot: Me, Josh & Matty (Sam couldn't be with us due to unforseen circumstances)
This was our last shooting session as we only needed to do the shots with the car and Sophie running down the road. This was our trickiest shooting session because the traffic on the road was out of our control, this meant that we had to take multiple shots of each scene. The other main problem we came up against was the concern from the public, which I admit does sound strange. With having a young girl chasing after a car it was no surpise to us when several cars pulled over to ask if our actress was alright and wanted to make sure she was okay. Apart from these two issues, there were no problems when filming our final scenes for our film.
My next post will describe the editing process my group and I went through.