Filming... can it possibly be finished!?

Yesterday Laura and I were trying our hardest to find a boy to star in our film and after being let down three times we thought this would be hard, we found this was the case as Laura asked two of them and they both said they had other plans. After some thought, and trying to get hold of every boy i knew, someone said yes! :)

I spoke to him and arranged with him to meet me and Laura to do some filming in the morning, when he arrived we got all the shots we needed and a few extra because he was very cooperative which was such a relief as our short film needs to be finished by Friday and we are now on a very tight schedule to get it finished, our boy has also agreed that if we need him tomorrow he should be able to come in. :)

After finishing our filming we had planned to get a camera and import our filming onto the mac, this is where we struck another problem! there was another group using the mac we needed and the camera too, we then decided to get on with our preliminary task (the poster).

Whilst we were filming in the graveyard we also got some photos of the background we wanted for our poster and a photo of the boy to use for the silhouette, we needed more photos because the ones we had didn't achieve the golden spiral rule and we needed the silhouette to be the main focus of our poster, so when we found we couldn't start editing we decided to make our poster and finished it before the end of the day, this means we are now one down.. two to go! then our media is finished :/

Tomorrow... because we couldn't get any editing done today we have decided that we are going to edit our film and finish our magazine film review for the best part of tomorrow and if it comes to it we will have to stay after school to finish it as it needs to be done by friday.

stressful...

today we filmed all our 'house' shots, it was a looonnngg day but by the end of it i think we have finally corrected the errors. we were always sure in switiching all the lights on around my house to make sure that the lighting on our film was much better this time, we also made sure that the continuity error with our tap in the bathroom was corrected and also had my mum emptying out our fridge and getting rid of those beers and only showing a bare minimum of food in it ;)

after accidentally filming over the first lot of work we managed to get done before lunch, we then went back on ourselves and had to frustrantingly film the whole lot again for the THIRD time. i am now officially sick of hearing the ringing of my stupid alarm clock, and Amy has had that many costume changes that not even Lady Gaga in concert could compete with! (god i am so sad! look at what this project is doing to me! i am now making cheesy jokes on the blog! gahh!)

we shall now go on to shoot the final shots at school with our boy and also the graveyard finish with our boy. and then hopefully that will be a wrap! we shall neatly finish editing our whole film, design our poster and magazine review and have it all nice and ready for friday. (dear god i need a miracle!!)

Re-filming

Whilst editing our film today we found that a few of our shots didn't work out so we are going to re-film them.

The first thing we found was that in the scenes of the graveyard we had broken the 180 degree rule so the scene didnt have continuity and had to get rid of one of the scenes we wanted to include so we will have to get some more footage of the graveyard scenes to fill the gap.

The second problem we found was that we didnt have enough footage of the girl looking at the gravestone and the gravestone looking bake up at her and we are going to need more scenes like this if we want to create a connection between the girl and the grave, we will re-film this when we film the scenes with the boy at the graveyard.

Another part of our short film we need to re-film are the scenes as the girl is waking up in her bedroom, we need to do this because the lighting is not right and needs to be lighter and the mise en scene is not right in some shots either as it contains things in the shot that shouldn't be there, we shall therefore need to re-schedule a time for re-filming this soon at laura's house.

Also with the scenes at laura's house we have spotted that in the kitchen scenes there is a shadow that shouldn't be there as she is supposed to be home alone, another thing we need to change is the food in the fridge as there is too much food in there to show her mum is never there and things in the fridge that a mother or daughter shouldn't have in there if they live alone with no father figure, we will also re-film this when we film other things again at laura's house.

I noticed that the cereal box that we were using had three happy children on the front which i thought would ruin the illusion that our character is sad and lonely, however, we thought that this was just being to picky but after speaking to our teachers about it i feel we should use a differnt cereal box so it carries on the feeling of loneliness, from this mistake i have learnt that when we are filming next time to take more attention to details like this so we don't have to re-film again.

shot checklist

to make it easier to see the progress we are making and the shots that are left to do, i have created a camera shot check list

Shot Checklist

another let down...

we were suppose to get some more filming done today with our boy in the shots, preferably Day 1 of our story would be completed and we were going to get the final shots of the boy and girl at school, with the hinting of the connection between them.

unfortunately at last minute our boy pulled out and so we could not film. i am hoping he will be free soon, so that we can try and complete filming altogether by the end of next week

here is a filming schedule that we can hopefully stick to

Week Commencing

Tedious

whislt getting a lot of filming done last week, i really started to realise how tedious it can get. me and amy have been really trying to work hard in getting as many shots of things as we possibly can, even if they are not used in the final cut. the amount of shots is takes to show our girl getting from one room in her house to down the stairs into the kitchen is so many, but we really hope that our hard work will get noticed and all the different angle shots we used will make a difference to the quality of our film. we will try and put a few of the creative shot ideas we came up with on here to show you. :)

progress...

after having the flu for a week, all my motivation for filming had shrivelled away and i saw no hope for our film. our actors had repeatedly let us down and time is quickly running out. i really could not see our film going anywhere and so had a talk with Mr. Smith. we have overcome some obstacles and i feel alot happier now that Amy is going to be starring in our film.
on Thursday we were able to get all of the graveyard shots that have only Amy in them completed, giving us a starting and part of an ending to our film. we then both went round to mine on the Friday morning and got all shots of the girl at her home finished, filling in a large bulk of our film. all that's left to do now is all the shots which include our boy in them too, which we hope to have done by the end of this week.
we shall show our shots done so far in tomorrow's lesson, and try and get some feedback from our teachers :)

Filming again

On Friday we went to Laura's house to film the house scenes, we managed to get all the footage we needed and think it went quite well as we also got some extra footage just in case we need it when it comes to editing.
Today we are planning on filming the scenes in school with our boy character and hopefully getting them all done so then we only have to film the rest of the graveyard scenes with our boy character and can get on with editing and finishing our short film after this week.
Considering how many problems we have had i think that our short film is coming along quite well as long as we can get the filming finished this week.

Laura,
I have written about how our filming is now going, do you want to write up times we have now decided to film because you did it quite well last time and then we have an official plan for filming written down.
Amy x

Filming has finally started

Yesterday we were really unsure about our film and were even considering changing our idea, however, we have decided to stick with it and try and get it done, also whilst having these thoughts we decided to do some practice shots around the school which we were not sure of how to film or if they would work but after doing them we now know how they will work in our film and are quite confident about filming them.

We have made some changes in our film, one of the changes is our main character, as we were let down many times by two different people we have just decided that it will be better if one of us was the main character and I have said that i will be her, the only problem with this is that i will not be able to film the scenes that i am acting in so i am going to film all the other scenes that i can and help laura set up the shots and give ideas to how they will be filmed. Also because I am now going to be the main character in our film we could use some of the practise shots of me in the school in our film if we need them.

Today we actually got some filming done, although we couldn't get our boy character available to film today we got most of the graveyard shots done and we got a few more shots than we may actually need but i think this is a good idea because then we will not need to go back to film any more and will have more shots to include when editing if we find we do actually need them.

Filming hazards

When we start filming we need to think of the hazards our settings may have which could endanger us, so i have thought of a few;

Graveyard scenes:

• One of us may trip over or slip on the ground, Likelihood: Medium
• Filming may offend or upset some people visiting the graveyard, Likelihood: medium/high
• Empty holes or uneven graves on the ground may trip us, Likelihood: Medium

School scenes:

• if we film at the end of school clening will be being done so floor may be wet and one of us may slip or fall, Likelihood: Low
• doors or gates may get locked and we may not be able to get out if we do not ask permissions to film, Likelihood: Low
• People in school may make filming difficult, Likelihood: medium/high

Home scenes:

• At home you are generally off guard so may not be expecting anything to go wrong so if it does it will be a shock, Likelihood: medium
• Knives in the kitchen, Likelihood: Medium
• slipping in the bathroom scenes, Likelihood: Low/ medium

Bus scenes:

• Some members of the public may not cooperate and make filming difficult or even get offended that we are filming, Likelihood: medium/high
• Their is a hazard that the bus may crash as we are filming, Likelihood: Low/medium

Now we know about these hazards we will have to be careful as we are filming and make sure we do our best to avoid these dangers.

Let down again

Today we were again supposed to get most of the filming done but unfortunately laura is ill and i cant even start filming because our actress cannot be filmed today!
I am therefore going to make a start on the other element of our short film task, the task i am going to make a start on is the film poster, although we were going to use a still from our film this is now not possible as we haven't been able to film yet, I am now going to use a picture of the graveyard we took last week for our ideas of settings.
Amy x

finally going to start filming!

i have been sat at home with the lurgie all weekend but that doesnt mean i havn't stopped working on our film :P
i have managed to get in contact with a boy who is willing to be in our film and so have communicated with our girl as well and been able to sort out a filming schedule which shall begin as of tomorrow

Monday 8.45-10.20 filming with Lauren and Jack
all of graveyard scenes- beginning and end of film

Tuesday 12.30-3.10 filming with Lauren
all footage of house in the morning

Wednesday 3.10-5.30 filming with Lauren
all footage of house in the evening

then leaving Thursday to begin editing


i shall then make up a schedule for next week in which we can get all of remaining shots finished.

Shots and ways of filming

Our film has got quite a strong story line now and we have decided what each scene is going to include, however, now we need to think about how each shot is going to be filmed and what shot types we are going to use, I have had a few ideas;

With the scenes including the school we should film the building as though it is towering above our character to give it a daunting look, because our character is not going to see the school as a good place because she has no friends.

I thought that because our main character is feeling lonely we should film with a slight angle to show that she is not happy, we will do this by having the camera looking down on her and making her seem insignificant. This angle on her could then change to looking straight on at her towards the end when she meets the boy, this will show things are looking up for her.

In the graveyard scene as she is walking towards the grave i felt that we could make this scene quite interesting by filming her at all different angles and when we come to editing it we could cut it so that she is walking then it jumps forward a bit then carries on walking and show it from a different angle, we could even pan around her as she is walking and show her walking past and then seeing her walk from the back and finally getting to the grave.

When our character is stood at the grave we could film as though the grave is a character, we could do a match-on-action shot so the camera looks at her from the grave and is looking at her then a shot from where she is stood and looking at the grave, I think this will be effective because it will show the connection between her and the grave.

On the bus scene we will have to film more footage of our character on the bus because then if we need to show a long time we can use the footage we already have rather than having to film more, also this footage may come in handy in case we need more and we dont have time to film or have more problems like we already have.

Settings and descriptions

Settings For Our Film Powerpoint

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pictures of settings

Pictures Of Settings

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Problems with filming again

As I wrote yesterday we were going to start our filming today, however, we were needing to film outside and the weather has not turned out the best for this to be successful, also we were planning on filming the whole of the opening sequence because then it would look better in our film when the starting and ending where the same, as the lighting and weather would all be the same, we can no longer do this because we need our boy character to be in these shots and we have recently found out that he cannot do it today, so we are going to find out a time when we can all film and get alot done because then our filming will run smoothly, also the corridor where we were going to film in school has had a smashed window so we cannot film there.
Apart from this we have planned which shots we need to film at one time and when we are now thinking of filming them so even though this let down has not been a help we are going to find a way around it.

Filming

We are going to start filming tomorrow after school, our actress is free so we are hoping to get a few shots done, some of the shots that we are planning to get are; All of the graveyard shots right to the end so that everything stays the same in the beginning and end, also the empty school as we will be filming after school and hopefully everyone will have gone. We will also try out some other shots if we have time.

bus shot

went to town the other day on the bus and so took a photo of the kind of shot we are looking for in our bus scene of the film. our protagonist will be leaning on the window looking at at what passes by :)

storyboard

okay so here is our storyboard, at the moment we are just going to go with what we have got and start filming, if we feel something needs cutting we'll cut it, or if somethings needs adding, we'll add it! :)
hope you like it!
laura and amy x x