Tuesday, 29 March 2011

Withheld. Rough Edit.

This is the first edit of our film Withheld. This copy of the film is the rough edit as we intend to re-shoot a number of the shots and work a little more on the editing side of things. This copy has enabled us to see what our film looks like already and catch what and where things need to be changed.

Tuesday, 22 March 2011

Construction Phase 3.

Monday 21st March 2011.

Present: Matty, Josh, Holly. (I could not be present due to unforseen transport issues.)

Even though i was not present at the shoot, the group have filled me in on what they filmed.
On this night they filmed the remaining external shots revolving around Sophie's character chasing a "Mystery Person" in a car down a reasonbly small length of road. They told me they were posed with a couple of major problems. These problems being; as they filmed on a strech of public road they were seeing traffic come past while recording a shot. Sadly this was completely out of control and unavoidable. Although they could attempt to time their shots so as soon as the traffic had passed they could begin filming and try to minimise the amount of time spent recording, thus minimising the possibility of cars passing by during a take. The final problem the rest of the group told me they came across was interuptions from members of the public being concerned for Sophie. Seeing her chasing after the car in a dress and high heels can understandably attract attention, but i believe this was infact a good thing as it means that our film looked realistic to the general public. Apart from this they informed me that there were no other problems and many of the shots they did were done in one take.

Thursday, 10 March 2011

Construction Phase 2.

Wednesday 9th March 2011.

Present: Myself, Matty, Josh, Holly.

Today we used our two hours of lesson time to film the internals shots that are featured at the beginning of our film. The set up for the fore-mentioned internal shots are Sophie standing against a black curtain.
For this we had intended to use the schools drama studio but due to some administrative errors we had to relocate to another location. This posed a few problems as there is only one other set with a black curtain that we are able to access, the schools theatre. This change meant we had to alter our original lighting plan to fit on the stage. While we were altering the lights and setting up the camera equipment on the stage we were struck by a thunderbolt moment. We changed our original idea of having her standing in some unknown area against the black curtain and decided that Sophie would be performing on stage in front of an empty auditorium, showing her madness by making her scream at the end of the shot. This in turn made us think of an intresting graphic match we could encorperate into our film to take us from the stage, to the action packed night scene. Apart from this we came across a couple of problems with the tracking dolly. This came in the form of trying to match the speed at which the curtains opened to the speed at which the tracking dolly would track backwards. After a number of re-takes we managed to get it right and as well as this, possibly made it better. Holly and Matty shook the tracking dolly as it tracked back to add effect to Sophie's scream. We did this to show how powerful the scream was and to shake the audience in their seats so they really feel this power.

Monday, 7 March 2011

Construction Phase 1.

Sunday 6th March 2011.

Present: Myself, Matty, Josh, Holly.

Today we git together ar Matty's House to film the indoor shots for our film. These shots revolved around Sophie our actress, waking from her "bed" and moving into the bathroom to then discover her injuries. We began at around 12 and filmed all the way through to 4:30. This may sound like a very long period of time spent on shooting our indoor shots but by spending this much time on them we have guranteed ourselves the best quality shots for our film.
We stuck to the story board exactly making no change to the shot order, or the shots themselves. Overall today we encountered quite a few problems while filming. We had to retake a number of the bathroom shots as we found it extremely hard to fit ourselves, the camera, and the actress into the bathroom to film. To fix this problem of space, half of the group left the room while we were recording and those inside would film from the comfort of Matty's bath tub. As well as this the space restrictions made it incredibly hard for us to make a successful pan from the door to the mirror. And to make this an even harder shot we also needed the door to be part open to avoid making a continuity Error. We solved these problems by reshooting each shot a few times and deciding on a group which would fit best.
Overall today went very well and i am happy with the decisions we made and the shots we filmed.