FILMING


8/11/'10


Success : We got most of the shots that we wanted in under an hour.

Obstacle : We had to find people who were willing to be filmed because the original actors were unavailable.

9/11/'10

Success : We managed to re film the shot in one session.
At this point we had all the shots we needed with a wide variety of angles and shot types.

Obstacle : We had to re film one of the shots because it was not how we wanted it to be.
15/11/'10

Success : We imported all of our clips into Final Cut Pro.

Obstacle : We couldn't import directly to the mac book so we imported it to the mac and then move it to a hard drive. We imported using iMovie.

after watching the finished version we decided we could film something of a much a higher standard.

We agreed that the school should once again be the location to the film but everything else needed to be re-thought. The original script was particularly good so we decided to use the same class room setting. This time we wanted to focus on the build up of suspense and taking inspiration from "panic room" had an idea for an extended dolly shot. To give the camera a sense of being undetectable but still part of the action, I thought it would be a good idea for the camera to snake along the ground and go underneath tables and even right past peoples feet. This gave the camera a sense of being an animated object and maybe even a some kind of animalistic character.

At this point it was the end of term and there was only one day when the school was open so we only had one chance. After assigning story boards and the new script and synopsis amongst the group we began production. On the day i wanted to make sure we had a smooth dolly shot, this was because in the short film the camera work was almost to shaky and we wanted to avoid this. We did not have any expensive equipment so jamie brought in his bike and an old scooter he had lying around to try and attach the camera to. However the scooter had small wheels and was too bumpy for our needs. Using 2 belts we successfully attached the camera and tripod to the bike.

When we were outside the bike was a little bumpy but it was still smoother than walking with the camera.

When we were filming one of the main gates was closed which blocked the path we originally wanted to use was blocked so we had to go around.

The camera we used was a digital camera this meant we could upload directly to the mac book however when using the higher quality settings it had limited memory, this meant that twice during filming we had to stop because we had used up all the memory space.

03/02/11

To help us bring the level of our production up we were given professional feedback about what was needed to make our film better. When we first filmed the hallways were empty and this made the setting seem creepy. To make it feel as though the school was once full of life and develop a back story we filmed shots of students as they were walking around the school during break time, a particularly busy time. We had to make sure that the camera followed roughly the same path as the previous dolly shot other wise we wouldn't not be able to fade one over the other.


11/02/11

We took the camera after school to film some scenes. We waited until after school because we needed an empty classroom to film in. However we ran into our first obstacle when we couldn't find a suitable classroom that was unlocked. Part of the professional feedback that we back got was to include random scenes and images to break up the titles. So we decided to try and find things that we could use. However we encountered another problem, it was raining outside when we first filmed so we couldn't film outside.

Eventually we found a classroom and were able to film. As the filming drew to an end we ran out of memory on the SD card. Luckily we were able to delete some unnecessary clips and finish filming.