Below I am making a shooting diary which consists of all of our filming dates, from now, until we finish filming.
In ths diary I will be posting all the positive and negative points and progress that was made, this will assist us and help us to learn from them by making our next film shoot better.
Thursday 19th January 2012: TOM FISHER, JOSH CLARKE AND DEMI LEIGH ALCOCK PRESENT; SAM BECKETT ABSENT VALID REASON.
AFTER SCHOOL 3:35pm
Firstly when we arrived at the shooting location we got straight into setting up the equipment. We brought with us the crane, tripod and HD camera, it took us 15 minutes to set up the crane after realising we set up the crane arm the wrong way, so we couldn't operate the tilt arm for high and low angle shots, which meant that we had to take it all apart, plus it was cold, so work on the crane slowed a lot. Once we sorted the crane we began filming, we had some great ideas for positioning from Josh, who was director, and very good crane and camera shots from myself, Tom. Demi was artistic director which means she had to tell the actor, Josh's mum who was playing the part of Rose, how to act in this scene and give her motivation, however Demi failed to give accurate direction But Josh's mum persevered and was able to create the character we wanted. We hired Josh's mum as an actor because it was her life long dream to act in a film, so we gave her the opportunity to act and she was amazing!
We managed to film the garden scene, which was a very quick scene, however it is probably one of the most important scenes because it is at the end of the film. Also it was an extremely cold day so we didn't want Josh's mum to get too cold as well as ourselves, so we did quick shooting but at the same time we took our time making sure every last piece was correct before concluding the shoot at 5:30pm.
Saturday 21st January 2012: JOSH CLARKE PRESENT EVERYONE ELSE NOT ABLE TO MAKE IT. EVERYONE HAD A VALID REASON, MINE WAS THE FACT THAT I HAD TO HELP TEACH DRAMA TO CHILDREN AT THE PRINCE OF WALES THEATRE IN CANNOCK AT A WORKSHOP WITH A FRIEND.
All that I know is that Josh filmed from 10:30am until 1:00pm and shot the living room scene, where Chris placed down Rose on the sofa, and the chair lift scene.
Wednesday 1st February 2012: TOM FISHER, JOSH CLARKE AND SAM BECKETT PRESENT; DEMI LIEGH ALCOCK WAS NOT IN LESSON.
DURING LESSON 1:25pm til 3:35pm
Myself and Sam went to collect Adam, who was playing the part of Chris, we fetched him from 6th form he was needed to film the office scene, which was not a long scene, in the meantime Josh set up the camera and tripod. We set to work straight away, Sam and Josh set up the set detailing how each little item would look, whilst I gave Adam his motivation for this scene, which he acted and responded really well to. There was a little bit of trouble getting the focus right in certain scenes, which we solved by shooting the same shot a number of times changing the angle and positioning of the shot in different places around the office.
We decided to place the camera right in from of Adam, Chris, to give a point of view shot from the laptops point of view, this was a good shot but the flatness of the camera was not good, so we raised it by placing books underneath the camera because the tripod could not fit on the window-sill. We used a nice point of view shot that was controlled by Josh and we used Adam, Chris's, hand in the shot to give the audience a feeling of how Chris reacts to life.
Tuesday 7th February 2012: TOM FISHER AND JOSH CLARKE PRESENT: SAM BECKETT AND DEMI LEIGH ALCOCK ABSENT VALID REASON.
Myself and Josh began filming about 4pm at the Ramada, this didn't take long because all we needed equipment wise, was the HD camera and the tripod, we filmed Chris walking then running into work as a long shot panning to the right. This took about 8 minutes of filming, once finished we dismantled the camera from the tripod and walked to Josh's house where we continued filming.
At 4:45pm we set the camera up in Mrs Clarke's bedroom to film Chris waking up Rose, I gave Adam, playing Chris, his motivation, tired and annoyed with his mum, in more detail of course, and we began filming this. One scene took 10 minutes to film which was good and quick and we got some excellent footage.
Me and Josh took Adam into Josh's bedroom for the wake up scene, we rearranged his bedroom and took an aerial shot of Chris asleep, then a point of view shot of Chris awake, but because he is tired Josh came up with a clever idea to blur the lens, by setting the focus in and out a few times, this was a good idea.
We Then filmed in the bathroom where we came across a problem with the camera, because we want the camera to film at the mirror at an angle so you can see Chris clearly. I decided to take the tripod off Josh and place it off centre to the right of the mirror at an angle with a slight over the shoulder shot. We filmed the shots we needed and looked back at the footage to see if you can see the camera and you could not, so I was very happy with this.
