Friday 29th

Due to the weather being cloudy, it got dark too early on Thursday, so i got up extra early on Friday to try and catch the morning light. Because the deadline for the rough cut is due in today, i had to film with the time we had, even though the weather was different to the first time we filmed. I am currently learning how to tint the colour of the film on Premier Pro so i am hoping the after effects will help keep continuity throughout the two minutes.

As it was raining i had to prepare myself with an umbrella to protect the camera. Although this was awquard to hold on my own it kept me dry too enabling me to stay out for longer. As it was early in the morning when i filmed, there was local dog walkers that interrupted my shots at times, so this ruined some of the shots. I had to re-adjust the camera stand many times because the floor levels were so uneven, as i noticed some of my filming was at a crocked angle.

It was harder than i thaught panning tree branches and had to practice this process several times to try and keep a steady hand. The camera stand legs got in the way when trying to shoot from worm eye view, but i overcame this by shortening the lenght of the back two legs so the camera didnt have to be tilted at such a low angle.

filming tree shots

Our planned date to go out a shoot the tree and branch shot on monday was re-scheduled to the next day, tuesday 26th. The other members of my group could get to the location or has other commitments so i decided we would split our responsibilities where i would film and record the sounds, help guide the editing and Lewis would piece together the shots and work with the music and Stuart would edit the shots with him and match up colours, and change the look of the flashback shots.

On tuesday i booked out the camera and set off to the location straight after-school to catch the sunlight before it goes down because at this time of year, then sun goes down early. I set up the stand and my chosen point to film, and discovered the camera had no battery. this delayed the filming further as by the time it was charged, outside was too dark for me to shoot. The effect of morning light is hard to get after midday but after college finishes is the only time i have free to shoot. I have re-scheduled the filming again to the following Thursday 28th. This means our rough cut due friday will be very limited but our group is using the time we have to achieve the right effects on the shots we already have, and we are currently marginalizing them and putting them in our decided order.

Selection

As our lesson wasn't long enough, i worked on our filming in my own time which limited me to the amount i could do because i don't have all the authority to make all the decisions. I went back and viewed all we had shot so far on friday 22nd to see what works, and what doesn't. My personal opinion was to re-shoot the only inside scene to improve the lighting, add background music and match the angle to the outside shot we are comparing it to. Instead we attempted to edit what we already had by using the computer. I was unsure of the quality of several types of shots, but re-names the ones that we definately couldn't use called 'no' because of aeroplane noises, jogged panning, and other mistakes we hadn't noticed while shooting. Others i thought were most appropriate i named 'use' or reffered to the improvement we could do to make it better. 

I started to think about how we could make the 'flashbacks' look most effective. Making the appearance seem darker would suggest it's night time, tinting the film with slight colour such as red would be symbolic for many things, such as danger. 

Reflecting on filming

During the week we uploaded what we had recorded onto the school macs in order to start editing them and putting our film together in premier pro. after importing the files we were able to view them in lesson and select the appropriate ones to use. Our first choice was to match up the jump shot between the C.U of the gagged lips and flash back of the lips sipping wine. The effect we we're trying to create needed the angles and distances of the shot to be similar, so we selected to two most appropriate to each other. the problem we found was that the flashback shot wasn't close-up enough and her head was too central, so we learnt how to rotate and zoom into the image through using the effects control. This is a 'jing' video showing the skills i learnt...

production

Props

Make up (Mine-en-scene)

Filming

Janruary 17, sunday

After having problems with the weather, we managed to book out an HD camera to start our filming. Due to this we were unable to film on the organised dates we origionaly selected, so when finding a dew date all members of the group and our actress could make was a difficulty because of other responsibilities. In the end it worked out as last minute work cancellations allowed us to all work together as a group. We met at my house as we planned as a base station as it's nearest to our location, the Jordan's woods is just up the road so if props were forgotten or weather turned for the worst, we had somewhere inside to go.

When setting up at 10:00 sunday morning, we realised the camera had no battery, so our scedual was delayed while we charged it up. This was a problem because we needed the morning sunlight to shoot for the right effect. To resolve the problem i used the time to find appropriate props we'd need to take out. we discovered that the red shoe we needed to use didn't fit the actress to we re-thaught out how we would make it look effective. Then i did Jordans make-up to shoot the first shot which is the only scene inside.

Lighting was our main problem when trying to create a party atmosphere, and trying to capture the morning light but the shadows of the tree's in the wood was distracting. due to our limited amount of time to film, we shot our flashbacks in the same light, even though we had planned to shoot them in darker light to keep the continuity of night before morning, but we decided we would use the effects control to edit the flash backs so they appear different later in the process.

Overall we managed to shoot all the scenes we needed our actress in, but there's a posiblity we may need to shoot again if they arent good enough quality. We divided and swapped responsibilies between direction the actress, controlling the camera and re-shooting the scenes to achieve smooth panning. We repeated filming the same shot several times to account for mistakes, jumping movements, sound distractions and to make sure we achieve the right angle we had planned. The weather was cold and although the members of our team, Lewis, Stuart and myself were wrapped up prepared to film, Jordan was damp and getting colder because of the short party dress costume, so we had to postpone the rest of our filming to a later date. This could disrupt our continuity as slight difference in light and the tree's may change, so to attempt to prevent this, we have organised to film the remaining shots on monday 25th Jan.