Saturday Filming Evaluation

Saturday Filming Evaluation,

This Saturday we set out to film in three locations for our film trailer, the first being Clevedon Marine Lake followed by our Backwell location (BT research laboratory) and the finally My home, Kingsett.

We set off on time and arrived at Clevedon comfortably on schedule, we then began to get our equipment out of the back of the car and proceeded to set it up. Our first shot was a running shot where Ellena would be running along the seafront and down some stairs down to the lake itself. This shot was fine, though we did have some trouble with the camera gimble that my friend brought along, where it was water damaged from a previous shoot. Next, we had all the Clevedon shots where we needed Ellena to run to the water's edge and pretend to jump in, these shots were great we did have to politely ask some people to move out of the way to get a clean shot but that was easy enough. Then we had to get Kes to jump into the water and pick up a boy, unfortunately, we could not use the part where he pulled the boy out of the water as you could clearly see he was wearing a wetsuit in the shot. So, we decided only to use the part where he jumped into the water towards the box. This was it for this location, so we packed up all our bags and moved to the next location.

We arrived at Backwell on time, we parked the cars in a safe place then made our way to the Radio station carrying all our equipment, food and water. We then immediately began clearing alleyways inside of the buildings for our dolly shots, meanwhile, I was getting the drone shots to be as productive as possible with the time we had. After the alleyways and rooms were cleared of dangerous rubble by our crew, we began to shoot Ellena walking towards the buildings as well as audio for these shots where Ellena would take the exact same route but hold the microphone towards her feet so that Kes and I could add in the footsteps in the post. After this, we shoot some clips using my dolly, fluid head tripod, handheld and Steadicam of Ellena looking around this building. Then we shot some more clips in another building located on the site where we again got some shots of Ellena walking towards the building and looking around, we also got her to kick a door open and then after this we recorded some audio of Kes kicking the door open as he could make it seem more violent and energetic. Then finally, we had the shot where Ellena would walk up some stairs have a good look around the bright room and find a safe hidden in the wall. All these shots went well, I think we had some nice handheld shots of Ellena looking around that were beautiful as well as that some good audio recordings and dolly shots on the smooth floors.

Finally, Ellena went back to the car as she was getting a bit cold, we then began to shoot the shots of Ross looking around the abandoned site, we wanted the shots to be mysterious but also clean and smooth to fit my style of filming so for these shots we filmed the clips handheld and, on a tripod only. The shots we good especially the one where Ross is smoking, looking around the buildings shows the creepy side of the locations with some also weird shots where Ross would just push some cement off the roof. I was really pleased with these shots and so was Kes, we believe with some colour correction and some sound FX this scene could look amazing in the final trailer and I am glad we waited to film until this day. Even though it put me through some stress waiting to film. One other thing is that we got Ellena to wear the same green coat throughout all the shots for continuity, also we got Ross to wear only clothes that were old and worn to symbolise dirt and grit and even some pain over his character. Also, the lighting for all our shots was carefully considered as we did not want any camera shadows or any scene that was too dark.

Finally, we shot at Kingsett, where we had to capture some shots of Kes' face down in the pool as Sam was no longer available. As the LED’s constantly were changing through a cycle of 20 colours we only had about 2 seconds with the red LED’s active, this was a real struggle but luckily the pool was warm so Kes was warm at least. We managed to capture several different angles of Kes lying in the pool with the red LED’s active, so I’d say we were successful, as well as this there were constant showers while we were recording so I had to get my stepdad to hold an umbrella over me, so I didn’t ruin my camera! But on the whole filming today was great and was a fun experience, my only regret was not having more of the shots back at Clevedon, of the box being pulled out of the water, but I guess it adds something to the trailer not knowing what Ellena is jumping into the water for, so on that impartial experience that’s all I’ve got for today lets hope things go well tomorrow.