1st Day of Filming

Brief Information:

Date: Wednesday 10th December
Location: 57 Ramillies Crescent
Time of Day: Night

Time filming started: 4:00pm
Time filming finished: 7:30pm

Scene: 2
Shots: 22-24 - Interior

Crew Present:
Deanna Hopps - Director, Make-up Artist and Stunt Co-ordinator
Cameron Hargreaves - Cinematographer (Camera) and Set Layout
Daniel Springthorpe - Sound, PA and Stunt Co-ordinator
Charlotte Smith - Lighting and Cinematographer

Cast Present:
Rebecca Chapman - Alice
Ryan Witton - Richard
Millie Russell - Stacey

Equipment:
DSLR Camera + Tripod
Tracking Dolly
Sound Recording Kit
Large & Small Reflectors
LED Light

Summary of the Day:

Practising with the focus

Myself doing Rebecca's make-up

On the whole, today has been very much an eye-opener for myself and my team as we have realised that it is not going to be an easy ride this time to get our film finished. We have encountered some technical issues such as lighting and location size, which affected the shots we desired.

However, we have also gained experience from today because we have been able to work out which shots are easier to do and which we may have to alter, and in doing so allowed us to come up with better creative ideas to replace our previous ideas.

We started off the day by setting out the table exactly as we had set it out in our plans and made sure we had photos of everything to stop any continuity errors from occurring later on in the filming process. Our actresses, Millie and Rebecca, went upstairs to get changed and once they were done it was time for make-up. The make-up went well, took rather long to do as I was deciding what looked best to represent the characters and helping sort the set out downstairs at the same time. I have chosen to make the eye shadow of Alice much more paler and less sparkly than I had originally planned. 

We decided to kick off filming with scene 2: the main highlight of our short film which shows the argument as the past/flashback. The first shots we did was 22-24 which was of Alice sitting at the dining room table, waiting for her boyfriend, Richard, to come home after he stood her up and was late from 'work'. Rebecca was brilliant at the scenes and as soon as we told her what to do, she understood and carried it out with not protests. Shot 22 took about 3 takes due to disliked camera movement and framing. Shot 23 took 2 takes, mostly because we wanted two different angles on her hand and shot 24 took roughly 5 takes as we wanted to really get the emotion and angles/framing perfect because it was the scene where Richard 'makes his entrance' when the door slams.

The lighting made it incredibly hard for the camera to create a crisp clear shot and caused us to retake them many times to try and get the right shot as well as the small gaps between walls made us have to think on our feet and alter the camera angles and use hand-held camera instead of tracking etc...

Overall, we have decided that the current storyboard and animatic isn't working out for us due to the narrow hallway and stairs and the bad lightning so we have decided to redo our storyboard and start from scratch, taking the negatives and positives of this experience into consideration.

Transportation:

We transported the equipment to our location by car, along with two of our cast members going in the car with them, while the rest of us walked to the location due to not much room in the car being left for all of to fit in (there was 8 of us in total today). 

Crew Roles:

Cameron was mostly in control of filming the shots as he is the most experienced in the field. He made sure each shot was filmed correctly and perfect before we went onto the next shot. He made sure the focus was clear unless we used a focus pull, and tried to make the exposure as best as possible for the location, which proved a challenge due to the camera struggling with the lightning. 

Charlotte also did some cinemotography along with Cameron as well as being in charge of the lighting of the shots. She made sure that the lights we used, be that the LED or a lamp, suited the light from the ceiling lights - for example, if we filmed in the hallway, Charlotte would make sure that the light we used to get rid of the shadows and to make the exposure better matched the orange light of the ceiling lights etc. She also helped direct certain parts of filming and gave ideas to give the film more of a creative edge if scenes got boring.

Daniel was in charge of sound recording every little thing that we filmed. He made sure that every sound was clear and suitable. He also was the PA (a joke around the team) as he constantly served us food, often running to the chippy, and making the teas for the cast members and production crew. He also was the one who rounded up the cast and helped to clear up the sets and make sure that every match-on-action was the best we can make it because he seems to have the best eye for noticing if something was not quite right. 

Myself was in role of directing the whole thing, as well as helping in lighting (mostly holding the reflectors or LED in the place that Charlotte has appointed). I decided which shots we were going to do next, which shots were the best ones or whether we needed to re-shoot them as well as telling the actors what they must do and say to get the best performance. My other role was make-up and SFX make-up. I was in charge of making sure every time I did the girls' make-up, it looked exactly the same every time and was affective to the girls' personalities. 

The stunt co-ordinators of the team were myself and Daniel. More on this later on in the filming process.