Filming Update
Despite already having ideas prior to our third day of
filming, when we arrived at the location – Charlotte’s cabin, we found we had
to change our ideas for 2 different reasons. Firstly, the cabin was not quite
how we expected so we were forced to work around the differences/incorporate
them into our plot and secondly, we were inspired by the location which helped
us produce different ideas that we had not thought of before, but helped to
more add quality to our opening scene. As per usual, it took a lot longer than
we had expected because it was difficult to get the correct lighting and
positioning of our props, and we also had more props to set up than usual – the
pin board and dart board covered in pictures of teenage girls. Despite this, it
wasn’t a huge problem because we weren’t filming outside so we weren’t
freezing, and we had slightly more control over the light as we did not have to
rely entirely on natural lighting which was to our advantage.
As mentioned before, we initially hadn’t planned to show our
antagonist’s face in our opening because we believed it would take away from the
realism due to our young age, and so we had incorporated this into our plot as
a use of building tension and creating enigmas due to the element of the
unknown. Due to our change of plot, we
were forced to show our antagonist’s face and so in turn, we were also forced
to find another antagonist as we had previously only planned to show their
hands and feet and so we were just going to use any available male. We believed
Adam, our friend was the best fitting candidate for the role, however
unfortunately on the day of filming there were some slight difficulties. Due to
a Christmas charity day at school, Adam had completely covered his hair and
beard in a white spray in an attempt to look like Father Christmas, in which he
did very successfully. Despite the funny nature to his costume, it did not fit
at all with our plot and he was unable to go home and change due to the lack of
light hours in the day. We had to incorporate this into our plot through the
use of lighting and camera angles, in which we made dark and avoided filming
his face in light where it was most prominent. Although the situation was not
ideal and produced some strong altercations, we managed to work around it.
As we were all inside we were in a much better mood than usual because we were not so cold! This meant that we produced a better quality of shots because we were more motivated to get the correct/best fitting type of shots, and we filmed them many more times than usual because we were not as desperate to finish quickly. Unfortunately when we went to edit the footage we discovered that we were unable to use any of it because it was so dark. This is something which we could not have avoided as we were unaware that when looking back at the footage on the camera, and then on the editing software the footage it is shown in a completely different light, which meant that we were unable to see hardly any of it. Despite this being slightly impractical and annoying because it means we need to find a suitable time to re-film because it takes so long to set up, and because we are running out of time due to the deadline being February half term, in the long term it will probably benefit our opening two minutes. This is because, as usual, the footage almost always appears better the second time round because we are more experienced and it has already been pre-planned in detail so it is much easier and quicker. Similarly, we are also able to learn from our mistakes and avoid anything if necessary, and hopefully, it will be easier and produce footage of a better quality this time because our antagonist will not be dressed as Father Christmas so we will be able to film much more easily as we will have to take less precautions.
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