Blog 14 - Shooting Diaries

For our first day of filming we went to Friston Forest. This was where we had conducted our reccy and had taken the pictures for our storyboard. One of the initial problems we encountered was that only two people out of the six we had asked were able to turn up for filming on that day. this meant we had to re-think some of our group shots and Ciara also stepped in to be filmed at one point. Everyone had remembered to bring all the equipemnt they were meant to with them such as; the camera, tripod, DV tapes and costume etc. When we arrived at Friston Forest we were concerned that it would start to rain. This would have resulted in us having to post-pone the shooting for that day as the equipment would have been damaged by the rain and it would have been unreasonable to ask the cast to lie on the ground when it was wet.


Luckily it didn't rain and we were able to got the shots we had planned for on that day.

For our next session of filming we wanted to capture the indoor shots of a boy building a coffin. This meant we had to book a studio in college that would be appropriate for this. We also had to bring in props including a hammer and some sawdust. During this filming session we developed our skills in being able to use the studio lights in order to create the best shadow effect that we used in our video. We also had the song playing in the background to enable George - who was starring in it, to hammer in time to the music. This session of shooting proved very successful and we captured much more footage than we needed.


For our next session of shooting we went to a forest in Uckfeild. This was a 40 minute journey for myself and the dancer I was taking up there so lots of planning had to be undertaken the night before. For this session we used the same dancers as last time as well as two extras. This meant were were able to create the group dancing shots we were unable to in the first session.

The weather was much better this day so we were able to stay out filming for longer. This gave us time to be creative with different shots and the angles we were using.

These are three examples of different ways we used the camera to create the best shot:

Because we were filiming in a forest we were able to be creative with different shots on set as there was so much we could use in that environment that we had not planned for. For example in the Uckfeild forest we saw two trees leaning apart that created the perfect seat. We though this would work well as a throne for the main character to sit in for the line 'Kings and Queens have all knocked on his door'. This then lead to us having the idea of making a crown out of leaves and twigs.

As the sky was much clearer on this final day of shooting we were able to capture a clear shot of the sun setting. This is our ending shot and our opening shot when reversed to show the sunset and sunrise. The camera and tripod were set up directed towards the sky a we recorded for just over an hour. This then meant we could speed up the sun's movement across the sky.