Shooting: Day 1 and 2

Day 1:
For our first day of shooting, we meet up at 10.00am on Sunday 29th January 2017 in Tonbridge park with our main actor and starting setting up the camera by the bench in our chosen location. As forecasted, it was a mild day weather-wise so fortunately there were no shadows, floor glare or difficulty in lighting the actress’s face. Therefore we relied completely on natural lighting on the sun as we thought artificial lighting was unnecessary and could ruin continuity. We decided we would use post production editing if the lighting did not portray that melancholy atmosphere we wanted. However, we were aware it gradually would get darker and colder, as it typically does in January, if we took too long. We had planned to film the park and brick wall scenes today.

We gave our main actress, Ebony, a copy of the shooting script and some direction in how we wanted out character to be presented before we started filming. She changed into the costume and practised with the lighter. We had to add extra precautions to our health and safety list as it was a slightly windy day and we did not want Ebony to burn herself on the lighter. Therefore, we to change the script and got her to simply fiddle with the lighter instead as it did not make a great impact anyway as the camera could not pick up the flame on screen. 

We had all day with Ebony to get the footage we needed. We only had the other three actors for a limited amount of time though so we had to pick up the pace at which we were filming in the day. The continuity of the wipe screen was very hard to film and we came across many issues. However, we overcame those issues by adapting the planned shots slightly so that the wipe screen would work.

Before we left the park, we also recorded some of the ambient park sounds just a little distance away from the park on an iPhone 7, a microphone and on the Canon DSLR Camera.

Then we changed locations in Tonbridge to film the brick wall scene. Our three other actors left and Ebony went to go and change into her second costume. Then we freshened Ebony's makeup, adding some eyeliner and eyeshadow that was very roughly done so it appeared like she was outside the front of a club after a night out in the early hours of the morning. It was very cold for our actress to be wearing only a crop top and we could even see on camera signs of how cold she was. Therefore, we got her to take breaks in-between filming to get warm, while we took the time to look over the footage we had just taken. The time was coming to 12.00pm and it was still very cloudy, which meant that our natural lighting had not changed. Some time later we managed to get the shots we needed and we left for the day.

Day 2:
On Tuesday the 7th of February,  my group, Ebony and I all went to Lizzie's house at 4.30 to film the bedroom scene. These shots included the majority of the props we had created so we laid them out in the appropriate way and change the set so it portrayed what we wanted. As most of these shots were extreme-close up, fast paced, ariel panning shots we had difficulty getting them to focus. However, we continued to re-film until we got what we needed.
Then the high angled shot of Ebony lying on the bed was difficult as the artificial light kept needing to be corrected as it left shadows in the shot. This footage gave us the opportunity to use our directing skills to tell Ebony what we wanted her to act in order to convey exactly how the character is feeling at this stage. For example, we told her to hold her torso and shiver slightly to demonstrate how the consumption of drugs is effecting her and she feels vulnerable being in an environment she is not familiar with.
The hardest shot to film was when we drop the cigarette packet off the bed side table as it was had to make it look realistic, getting it to land in the correct position and avoid getting a shadow in the shot.
After about two and a half hour we had got all the footage we needed and went home.