Day 4

On this day we were working with some reshooting stuff at the graveyard with all the cast, to reframe some of the shots, but after that was done they were free to go. But we had to take nick to endcliff park to shoot the scene where he is losing it in the park and running from the voices. And that took several hours because, again we had shot new footage that wasn't in the storyboard. However this all went smoothly and we got some decent shots. We had now finished our shoot. Over the past 4 days we have had a great time, bonded well with all the actors and will stay in contact for our personal projects in the summer following on from this and some of our original ideas.

Day 3

This was by far our biggest day. We had our two biggest scenes in the film to shoot - the introduction to all of the characters, and Franchesca's death scene. The first scene took us a long time to set up as we had to move alot of furniture around to make space for the camera. However this meant that when we change the angle that we would see that we moved all the furniture so we had to do this for every single angle change pretty much. This made it a massive pain and we had to delay lunch by over an hour. The second half of the day was also delayed, we did lots of different angles that weren't in the storyboard, as well as the original shots. This ended up being a 12 hour day.

Day 2

For our second day we are now working with our whole crew, we filmed the outdoors stuff as that was the day with the best weather. We got a bus to the graveyard off ecclesall road, we had alsready scouted out this location and found where we wanted to shoot. Our biggest challenge for the shoot was keeping continuity with the sunlight that kept disappearing behind clouds. And the was one shot where i have to walk backwards through an overgrown area and circle around nick with a full shoulder mount on. As i couldn't see where i was going i had to get Ant to guide me through the foliage to help direct me until i could see where i am stepping when i circle Nick. This shot was pulled off very well. However when i looked back on some of the other footage there was several wooden poles that ruined the composition of some shots that i didn't notice on the monitor of my DSLR. So we used monday for a reshoot of that.When we went back to shoot some stuff with franchesca and jody we were quite effective and manged to finish on time with no issues.

Day 1

With this being our first day of the shoot we had actors call time at 10am. But me, Jack and Kyle went to stores to pick up all the gear at 9. I did a full equipment list and sent it to James for confirmation, and i had booked everything out the previous week from friday through to tuesday morning. This was the list:

-2x Standard video tripods

-1x Portable track and dolly

-1x Dedo set

-1x 200W Kino

-2x Reflectors

-1x Clapperboard

-1x Rifle Mic

-1x Boom pole

-1x Marantz 661

We were using my camera (Canon 550D) with a shoulder rig i had recently bought, and my lens set. On top of all this i also had a portable top light to stick into small areas to balance light out if needed. 

We knew that we wanted to use 3 point light set ups throughout our film along with gels to use some colour balance. 

When we got all the gear back we immediately started setting up for our first scene. This was the first time we used a proper lighting set up in practise, but i had made some lighting plans for myself for each scene to try and make it easier. For the morning we were slightly behind, but by lunch we had caught up due to becoming more and more familiar with lighting. After lunch we only had to shoot a tracking shot in the hallway which was tricky as we needed to pull focus at the same time. We had practiced this shot in a different location to get a hang of it. But this time we had my new camera rig and follow focus set up. Once this was on it was our first use of the full rig on the dolly. This took us nearly 10 takes to get right. But we feel this is a very good shot. 

Actors Auditions

We had decided to audition each actor to see the best we could get for our characters. We decided to have a full lighting and camera set up so we could watch all the audition tapes and compare them to each actor so we can properly judge each actor for each part. For auditions we had everybody there so the actors have an opportunity to meet the whole crew and so we can also analyse how they will get on in our group. We had plenty of girl actors actually approaching us from the adverts we had put out to several societies and other acting academies. However we could't find any male actors whatsoever. For our auditions for the supporting actors we decided to write a brand knew script in a different situation where they have more dialogue as the supporting actors had barely any lines and we felt we should get them acting in a situation where they are more involved. As well as acting a scene from the main script and the scene we wrote we asked them questions about their physical portrayal of the character they would be playing and how they should react in certain situations and what they think of the script and the message we are trying to put across. This helps us to know if people are going to understand our piece and if they are going to get the right portrayal of our characters.

With us still looking for a male actor we had got to the point where we thought we might have to push filming back another week. It got to two days before the shoot when we were approached by Nick. We were so lucky as he was exactly what we were looking for, for our lead male. Our supporting male wasn't confirmed until the night before shooting. So because of this we didn't get a chance to film an audition, but we had no other choice but to go with him. Now instead of being a week ahead of schedule we were now a week behind.

After Easter meeting.

Throughout Easter me and James were waiting for a script that Reece was supposed to write. He had all the ideas and relative information such as the character profiles and a description of how the story would plan out. We were supposed to have a draft copy by the end of the first week. We didn't get anything throughout the rest of the holidays despite us asking. If i had the script i would have been able to have a draft storyboard and shot list ready by the time we came back, keeping us ahead of time and allowing more time for reshoots if needed and to be able to perfect our final edit. However because we didn't receive it until we came back after the holidays I feel what we received was very rushed and not up to standard. So me and James talked to Reece and actually rewrote, using the same structure he set out, the dialogue to make it much more realistic and consistent. over several days me and James did this and eventually came up with a good script which we got a lot of good feedback from. We did some adjustments and now had our final script, a week and a half behind when we wanted it by. This in turn delayed our rough storyboard and shot list, as well as not having any actors auditions because we weren't able to get anyone to audition without a script. We had a location and shooting date set for the week after, planned in the holidays to make sure we had it. Because of this delay we had to push it back a further week. Despite this delay we still weren't behind, we just weren't ahead anymore, which gives us less time for reshoots if needed.

Team meeting one

In this first meeting we decided to go through our ideas to try and get something together, we also ended up deciding on our story and developing our characters.
Our very first idea was mental health, however we all felt this was too vague so we decided to narrow it down to try and get something more specific. We ended up listing mental illnesses. We eventually came up with schizophrenia when i realised recently i watched a video simulation of somebody experiencing a panic attack. Then we thought about doing something along these lines, but dramatising it. We eventually agreed on this idea and started developing character profiles. We have the documents that we used to create these on James Webb's blog. After this was done we all talked about how it would play out in the story. We came up with so many different ideas and plot twists and different styles that what we had was more of a plan for a half hour short rather than a 5 minute one. So we put the majority of the ideas to the side to develop as an independent project in the summer. In the end we had decided to keep it quite simple to make it easier for the audience. After this session was done we sent Reece away to develop our script by the end of the first week in the easter holidays so James could send off copies of our draft script to actors so we could start filming 2 weeks after we get back.

Le Miroir Analysis

We were shown a selection of films in our first drama session with debbie, "Le Miroir" was my personal favourite of the selection that she showed us. I like it because it is an original idea, and i love how well it was shot in such a small visual space and just what you can do with it to reflect the current age in the story.

The structure of the film reflects the main theme - journey. It is a personal journey that a boy takes in his life. It starts off with him being a little boy and ends with him flicking off the light when he is an old man, signifying his death.

I really like the use of first person in this film, it really helps to make things more personal with the audience. Seeing as this is the only viewpoint we have, and there isn't a change of location, for us to have an idea of what age our character is before we see him in the mirror is the set dressing and props. So we see a shaving set when he first begins to shave, or a cigarette with wrinkled tattoos on his arm when we know he is middle aged. All the small things like that make a massive difference to the audience because the location is all one colour and not that important to look at, it is all about the props that are used to help create a new character each time he turns away from the mirror, and it works very effectively.

Overall I really enjoyed this short film, it was the most creative idea i have seen in a long time, and it got me emotionally involved with the main character, which was very important. I enjoyed the camera techniques used and how it was used to link the edits into one smooth motion.