Friday Filming!

Hey All!

Having decided Friday 22nd February was the day to complete all our filming, we arranged for Carolina, and her dog Ollie, Sam and myself to meet at my house at 10:00am sharp! We wanted to get an early start to make as much use of the time as possible, and as our film had a bright and chirpy mood, the atmosphere and lighting in the opening two minutes had to reflect that, hence, we need sunshine. Unfortunately, we do live in England and suffer from poor weather so our lighting wasn't as bright as we'd have liked. However, we had a back-up screen and lights from the Media Studies department so I was fairly confident we would be able to generate the image and tone we desired for our genre.

Armed with our props, we bundled into our room with a friend of ours, Melisa, who'd offer to come and give us a hand moving stuff around and holding the odd screen here or there. We began with clearing out my room, removing pillows and draws to make the room more spacious. I'm a neat freak and it was akin to torture for me. We then rearranged specific areas of the room we were shooting in.

 

We cleared my desk and turned it into a make-up table, adding a mirror, beauty products and a bunch of photos with blue-tack to the scene. We also created the stacks of Vogue magazines and books on the bookshelf for the panning shots, as well as adjusted and added little details to the bedroom e.g. iPod speakers and 'Glow job' cream. By the time we'd completed the 'look' of the set, we'd realised how much we'd severly underestimated timings. We'd had to enroll the help of Vimmi, Sam's mum who generously went back and forth from Sam's house to mine, collecting anything we'd forgotten on the way over. All in all, we were finished by 12:00, two hours in!

 

 

Once we'd finished cleaning the room, and had a spot of lunch, it was time to get filming. I'd changed into my outfit and staggering about in platform stilettos to the best of my ability, trying not to die. Carolina had a doctors appointment at 1:00pm, and so we prioritised the dog scenes with Ollie first, as he would have to leave with Carolina. Working with animals is flaming hard-work, which we soon realised as we spent the following hour arranging Ollie and trying to encourage him with a range of treats to roll-over, and shimmy as much as possible. After completing filming, Carolina had to leave and Sam, Melisa and I spent the next 5 hours filming.

 

Having written a thorough script and storyboard, we found filming was a lot easier as we had a step-be-step guide of how and what to film, particularly as the storyboard included camera angles and shots. Time taken was cut down and our organisation was better as a result.

 

We also had trouble with the HUGE lights and tripod we had to manouver in and out of small spaces. I've apparently got the biggest room in my house but you wouldn't believe it if you'd seen as struggling that day. The bathroom was a particular problem however, with a lot of sucking-in, slipping in and out of crevices and crouching to hold the lights steady, we managed to get some reasonable shots. The light, in some cases, was very bright and white, almost clinical and we had to use the gold, reflective screen a number of times in order to dull in down and give the image a more natural, morning-glow look.

 

By the end of the day we were all knackered, and after returning the room to its former state, we sat down and plugged the SD card into my laptop. We tried to access the footage however, only a couple of clips were available to watch, and we got slightly panicked, assuming the problem was our computer and that as soon as we downloaded the footage onto the Apple Macs at school, it'd all be fine. Bidding Sam and Mel goodbye, I packed the rest of the film equipment away and anticipated Monday, when we'd get to start editing!

 

Pheebs OUT! ;)