Our preparation was all done and I was very pleased with our organization skills when it came to pre production. We had our story board almost completely replicated in our set and we had costumes collected already from our school theatre department. The problem we could have maybe addressed was the fitting of the costume to our actress. This was a problem because our costume was very big on Zoë. This ended up working well but was a problem at the beginning of the day.
When making choices of shots we had already established it in our shot list and story board however on the day small adjustments were made. We had already decided we wanted a long tracking shot to establish the set as we were please with the way our set had come out and wanted to show it off as well as making sure that our viewers knew the time period it was set (1940) to make this more obvious we would hopefully put sound effects like bombs, air raids and a radio from that time period, (maybe a Churchill speech).
Our tracking shot would need to be planned more now as we had the set and the camera and the track, we needed to establish where the camera would fit and we had to make choices with the items that were important to show. These items were for example, the radio and the photo, we didn’t want to waste time showing every little detail when they were irrelevant. The tracking shot ended up being extremely successful and after a few practice takes we got the correct shot.
Our costumes were simple and pre organized. We had a night gown that we got form our school theatre department and a gas mask. We had our modern time actor bring in clothes for example a zip up hoody and jeans, the way of showing that time had passed from when the young girl was down in the bunker was going to become more evident in editing we were planning. Our costume however was planned to help and make the sequence more planned.
Our props were what made our shoot for us. Having no dialogue. The whole set up of this sequence was reliant on our props being mostly taken up with tracking shot and close ups of specific props like our clown toy and books.
Our casting was easy we immediately knew that we wanted a young girl of around eight and Zoë was very up for it. Our man in the second half of the sequence was easy to fins as well. We have a psychology and drama teacher that was up for the job and we could guarantee that he would do a good job. These two both turned out a complete success as they did the job in hand and were consistent and efficient throughout the day.
The lighting in the first sequence was just a dim lit over head light until the end of the sequence when it was a little bit more complicated. For the ending we wanted to see the shadow of a man and to do this we needed a brighter light but to keep with the continuity of the scene we couldn’t just suddenly let the room brighten. So we decided to add a door in its place and put a blond head light behind it. This meant that the door opens and the light shines through leaving a shadow of a man. This worked well because the continuity stayed consistent and there was a reason for the light to shine in.
Over the whole day of filming we all shared roles. When one of us was holding the camera the other was either holing the boom (microphone) or watching what was being filmed on the big TV screen. When it was my turn and we were filming the tracking shot, I was watching for mistakes and I noticed that our light had reflected onto the photo frame so Charlie and Sophie had to re do the tracking shot. This was a very rare occurrence thought and we saw few errors with our filming. To make sure we knew the shots we would want we made it certain that we wrote down the take the liked the best so that in editing we would not waste time looking through our options when half of them are no good.
Charlie, Sophie and I worked very well as a team and had no disputed of rows. This made our day much easier being open to hear any suggestions from each other and finding a reasonable compromise with conflicting ideas. Being able to recognize our weaknesses and strengths we used all of these as advantages and worked with it.
I hope to work with both Sophie and Charlie on future projects.
To conclude in all our day was a success we finished with a good reel of footage and I am very pleased with the way it all worked out. The reason that it worked so well was because we stuck to the original plan that we had organized and no one tried to change or adjust them unless it was necessary and agreed by the whole group.
