Tuesday, 19 November 2013
On the morning of the shoot, i contact the police non emergency 101 number to let them know that a violent scene was going to take place next to the spar shop. I had to give them my full name, address and contact telephone number, and they proved me with a reference code and assured me that the police would be aware of what's taking place, and that when i've finished filming to contact them back giving that reference code to let them know that i'm done.
Heres a brief video of some of the stuff that happened throughout the day of filming
Feedback/ overall thoughts
So yea i feel as tho i've learnt a lot off of this filming experience and encountered a few problems that i now know how to avoid when preparing for and filming a project in the future. On the day i took quite a few takes to finally get the vision that i was looking for because of either set location issues i.e. weather, screenplay issues i.e pacing or acting.
Screenplay feedback
With the script we had all decided to use it as a template to work off of, as in we'd follow the story of the script but improvise on the dialogue and some of the action to stretch out the scene.
On the day of filming we done 6 takes where we had a problem with the pacing of the script. The acting by the actors was decent, however, the 1st scene was moving to fast so we had to improvise to make up for the second scenes continuation of the first scenes footage in Phillips bedroom. What kept on happening was, by the time screenplay had gotten to the INT.PHILLIPS BEDROOM. NIGHT. LATER the 1st scenes mobile phone footage had finished because the pacing was too fast. Had i of decided to be content with that, i would've had to of have Phillip and the audience re-watch back something that has already happened(replay the footage), which would of left me in trouble as i wanted a continuation of the first scene over onto the second scene via voice over and a clip of it showing on Phillips laptop.
Technical feedback
After listening back to the audio from my third take, i decided to not use the felt strip because when i listened back to the footage, the audio was too muffled because of the mic hole was too covered by the felt strip and also the layers of clothing on the actors from the mic moving around where it was fitted.
If i was to reuse this method i would use paper clips or a pin so that i could firmly attach it to the actors clothing and maybe remove some of the layers off of the felt strip or use moleskin padding.
I shot some scenes without the Rode mic because whilst filming besides seeing my shadow on the pavement i also could see the video shot gun mic's shadow too.
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| Mic shadow on the green box |
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Also because of the weather on the day, it was very bright at the location, so besides getting some good lens flares i also got some over exposed shots which could blind the audience.
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| Bright sun flare, where i'm using a phone i couldn't use a ND Grad filter |
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| Bright sun flare, where im using a phone i couldn't use a ND Grad filter |
Some other minor mistakes that i made was forgetting to close my car boot whilst filming some of the first takes so the shadow was showing on the ground (not that people would notice)
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| Phillip (on the right) is standing on my car boot shadow |
Set Props feedback
More duct tape, i didn't have enough and ran out towards my final retakes, so had to use brown box tape and selloptape instead.
General feedback
The rest of my feedback about myself i personally feel that i should of been more observative on the day. Whilst filming i was under a bit of pressure for time because i'd forgotten that i had a prearranged an event for that evening, so even tho my mind was on the current task, the fact that i was working to the clock made me overlook and miss out certain things i would of thought of.
For example, when i mentioned earlier about doing so many retakes because of the pacing of the action in correlation to the screenplay, if i'd of thought rationally, where the footage was ending in relation to the screenplay section, i could've continued filming and added onto the scene Takes that ended fast, because in the second scene it's a continuation of the first scene but for it to happen there has to be a switch scene, so i could've taken advantage of that and 'cheated' the audience. Had i'd of done that i could of saved myself more time and also MORE DUCT TAPE!!
But besides that, i had fun and learnt quite a lot from this whole experience so far.
