Filming the Preliminary Task

The task for this session was to film the task. Unfortunately for us, our desired location was occupied for the first hour of the lesson and so we were forced to wait until it was possible to film in it. So, we spent our time taking the photos for the props:


These were then printed off, but unfortunately not in colour due to the distinct lack of a working colour printer. This was a minor set back, but because of the nature of the task, the lack of recording time and the location of the film it really was not much of an issue.


By the time we were finally able to record I had familiarised myself with the recording equipment that we were using and this led to an effecient transition between camera angles. This meant that we spent under 30 minutes recording the 3 minutes of raw footage from which the film will be created.



This was the room where we filmed, and as can be seen, I tried to take a shot from all of the angles detailed in the storyboard. However, when it came to actually filming some of the angles had to be changed slightly to accomodate the tripod and the actresses' height. Almost all of the shots were incredibly similar, apart from the very last shot which ended up breaking the 180° rule because there was nowhere to place the tripod that would get both of the actresses in the shot. This may or may not be a problem depending on whether the other clips add up to 29/30 seconds. When it comes to my thriller, I think I am going to have to try and decide on the locations before storyboarding so that I can take into account all of the potential issues before they occur.

The filming itself was successful, although perhaps not as high a quality as I would have prefered. This was largely down to the difficulty in preventing bloopers and getting the reactions I wanted. I also think that we may have not done the shot/reverse shot correctly, however, it does not really matter as this is only a practise and it sort of works in the situation we have created.

If anything, my major problem with the filming was that I was the only person doing anything in my group barring Emily who was one of the actresses. This meant that I had to sort out the light placement, the tripod height and do all of the directorial work. This might have occured because I had a sense of purpose and knew what I was doing. I also knew what I wanted to achieve while the others may not have, ergo they let me get on with it. Everything might have gone slightly quicker if each of us had taken a separate job, like me on camera, someone else on lights, and someone else as the director. Unfortunately, that did not happen so we will have to make do with what we have.

By the next session I need to have sourced some sound effects and music so that the editing process is much smoother. I may or may not create a quick rough edit so that I can see whether we shot enough footage (I think we did, but we will not know until everything is edited together) but also to see whether the entire film works or not. We shall see.