Day 1
From day 1 there was issues with the shoot. To start with I ended up being a crew member down which meant it was only myself and Jemma. Which meant Jemma was on Sound and I had to both Direct and Camera Operate which I hadn't done before. However, we pushed through this and worked through the shots we needed. We had Carly for 3 hours on her own before we got Sophie due to her work commitments so we went straight in with scene 5 where Stacey is walking along a road and then we go into filming the shot of the flowers. With only a crew of 2, setting up the tracking shot was more difficult than I thought it would be. While setting up the track we also set up the flower scene.
I feel this shot went really well, we practiced and took the time we had to get this shot perfect and it paid off. We got all the walking footage of Carly done both effectivly and safely and didn't have issues with weather or sound.
After this we moved to the second location which was the field. Here, we again had the track being used so this was the first thing we set up when arriving. Sophie still wasn't at location so while she was traveling down, we went ahead and got the final shot which was the tracking shot of Carly from behind to the front panning.
Once Sophie arrived, we went ahead and got the remaining tracking shots that we needed Sophie for. Once we had done this, I moved forward and got on with the remaining scenes that were done at the field. Spreading the ashes was the hardest part as the agreement with the council was that we weren't allowed to leave any ashes or rubbish on the set. With the Ashes I had to use coloured sand to avoid any environmental issues. Our biggest issue with this location was having to stop and start as members of the public were walking past with dogs and we couldn't have them in sort or over the sound. We had to have the actors quickly change costume at location (only a jacket) in order to get the sense of different days, which I think worked effectively. I was able to keep good communication with my actors throughout here, especially with Sophie as she wasn't aware that we didn't film in the order that the film's script is written, So I can to ensure she understood what we were doing at all times, same for Carly however she's an experienced actor and was more aware of this.
When moving over to the next location, I realised we had an issue as Carly had to leave for an hour at 2:30 and we still had scenes with both Carly and Sophie in them and sun set was due at 15:51pm so we were running out of time. We got back to Chelsea's house at 2pm and Carly informed us she had to leave. As I didn't want to run over I agreed with my crew and cast that we would need to continue shooting scenes 2, 4 and 9 on the coming Saturday as those need to be in daylight.
When Carly left, we went ahead and got as much of Sophie's bits done in scene 3 and at the section where Stacey is appearing in the room, Carly returned to location. With scene 6, where Becky wakes up, I had written down for sun rays coming through the window. Getting this effect proved difficult as shining the lights through the window didn't give us the effect we needed and also it had gotten dark by this point so even with the blinds closed, you could tell it wasn't daylight outside. I ended up using the gold reflector on my reflector to get the colour of sunshine but not the effect I wanted.
When it came to the night shoot, this is where I had to ask from friends to step in and help. As we had a camera, boom microphone and 3 large lights to operate in this scene (scene 7). I had 2 more crew members turn up for this scene as Lighting assistants to make it easier for everyone. By this point the weather had also turned very cold so while I was busy blocking out my scenes I sent people who didn't need to be there inside to keep warm.
I had a 3 point lighting set up. The small Yongnuo YN216 Pro LED was screwed onto a boom pole and held up high to flood the location. I set up the Rotolight to be the keep light on my actors faces so we can get the detail out and finally I had 1 YN006 light shining on the background to bring out some detail for depth. I also put up a defuser on the Rotolight to make it a bit softer.
We did this for the entire scene, moving in for the close ups and out for wides and I feel it worked really well. The lights weren't at all an issue and lit the location really well.
Overall this scene day went really well. Unfortunately, we couldn't get some rather important shots like in scene 5 where Stacey is meant to look into a puddle due to the weather being clean and we couldn't recreate a puddle on the street. I also didn't get the shot of a ribbon flying into the house as we couldn't get this to look natural, it always looked faked and forced so we cut the shot instead. But overall this days shooting went really well.
Day 2 (Voice over)
On this day, myself and Carly came into the Maidstone Studios and went through the voice overs in the script. We cut the second voice over before we started recording as Carly and I both agreed it didn't feel or sound right. So the line "I wish I could tell her it's all okay" got cut as Stacey is showing this through the film. We changed this line to "But I hate seeing her so broken" as this brings out much more emotion for the characters and instantly hits the audience.
On the first shoot day I chose to change the voice over in scene 3 to being directly spoken to have a mixture of both voice over and spoken dialogue in the film for the character Stacey. Scene 5 is the most important voice over, with this being the scene that confirms and reveals that she's dead. We changed a few little things in this scene with the voice over but mostly it was kept to the script.
With scene 8, the voice over became a little hard, trying to get Carly to speak these lines so that they are slightly mocking in the sense that we've heard them all before, but not to be offensive was difficult but we got it. The final voice over I asked Carly to speak softly as to end on a close. Simple and nice.
Day 3
We shot the last of the film on this day. Starting with the flash back scene from outside, I wanted to have 'ghost Stacey' and 'Flash back Stacey' in the shot together, so as to show she's remembering rather than having her looking up and fading into a new scene for a flash back.I got the camera set up in a place where we couldn't see any grass, clouds, or anything else move so that I could easily mask around this in post without the worry of having noticeable masks on the screen.
Once this was done we got the cut aways we needed and moved on to the bus stop. The bus stop is at the top of the street and is next to a rather busy road which made audio an issue as we couldn't get a take without a car being heard passing. Although, there wasn't anything I could do since we didn't have another location and we were running out of time so we got on and shot the footage.
Overall I feel this shoot went really well. Although, I was only shooting with another crew member and had to both Direct and Film, we got what it was we needed and we did it successfully and professionally.
No comments:
Post a Comment