Tuesday, 23 March 2010

Day of filming

The day of filming went well. We split the filming into two days, because parts of filming were very different from others. For instance the interview scenes had to be done in a quite room preferrably with white walls where as all other scenes all had to be shot outside -at castle cove beach and in surrounding areas- and at one of our homes. We left straight after our class on the Wednesday morning and began filming the outside scenes on the beach and the house scenes. We needed three shots for the house scenes, which were easy to do. The first shot was a panning shot of the protaganist coming around the corner, through his front gate and to his door, the second was an over the shoulder shot of him approaching the door (that is already ajar) and pushing it slightly to reveal that it is unlocked and the last was of our protaganist looking around the ground floor of the house and then running up the stairs.After we had filmed the house scenes, we needed to film the slightly more difficult outdoor scenes. We made our way down to Three-posts beach and the cove at mid day and began filming in the horrible pre-sping Weymouth weather. The first shot we needed was an establishing, panning shot of the the beach where we would be filming, that would set the scene for the audience. The second was of our protaganist running along the beach, then stumbling and falling over, and then getting back to his feet and running out of shot. Other shots included: a shot of a dead body washed up on the shore, drenched though and covered in seaweed, tracking shots of Ethan running frantically across the beach and through grass, and a POV shot of Ethan face looking through the bushes and his terrified eyes. After our day of filming was complete (we ended up finishing at about half past three in the afternoon), we were confindent with what we had achieved and that we had all the shots we would need.
The following day we needed to film the interview shots, which showed Ethan reliving and retelling his experiences. We needed nine of these interview clips that would fit inbetween the other action clips. We therefore hired out the filming and camera equiptment again, and found a suitable room -I had imagened a plain room with bright, white walls as the setting to give a real interview/interrigation feel -but in the end we settled for a projection backdrop. These shots were very simple to film asd they obviously required know movement or much altering at all, the camera stayed in one place the whole time. The only problems were the acting -as sometimes, naturally, Lloyd (acting Ethan's role) would mess up his lines, and the quality of the sound, as sometimes we would get unwanted sound effects such as cars driving past outside or people in thje next rooms talking.

All in all I feel the filming went quite well and we got all of the shots we planned and needed to get in the two days we had planned and we didn't need to go back and reshoot anything.

Wednesday, 17 March 2010

Coursework progress update (trailer)

Since my last blog, tracking the progress of our coursework so far, we have had several problems. The main problem is that of attendance of group members, who have been away often, meaning i've had to carry on the work by myself occasionally. Because of this, I have often been left on my own, having to decide upon ideas and make other vital decisions by myself. As a result we are horribly behind schedule, although I have done my best individually to make the ideas progress. Today we are filming, having scrapping our previous idea, and come up with a new, less complicated version of the original story. I am very nervous about how this is going to end and the result I will end up with this year.

Monday, 1 March 2010

Coursework progress update (trailer)

It is understood that our entire group will be able and ready to film our trailers in about two weeks time. Myself and my group therefore, are working hard on our final idea, so that we will be ready to film by this date. So far we have completed SWOT analysis's, written a final synopsis, drawn up the majority of the storyboards amongst other things. We still need to write up a script (and then fill in the Script Dual Column on Moodle), as well as finishing our stoyboards and finally sorting out everything required for the day of filming. This will include: paperwork such as permission slips, and equiptment sheets (as we will be loaning out equiptment from the college media centre) and filling in the Call Sheet which is also on Moodel. We will also need to find suitable places to film and actors to appear in our film. If we complete all of these important stages in the planning and pre-production process, I am certain we will be ready and prepared for filming in two weeks time.