may 15th Filming

Today I finished the main shot of filming, all that there is left to do is edit and perhaps refilm any lines I may have missed out accidentally, I have been Editing over the past week , especially doing sound work and special effects, and also working on Colour Correction on My film I also gave up on the chance at working on a Mac and the Motion software and colour for filter effects but cause of the poor quality of it Avi conversion so it can work on Adobe Premiere, I worked On After Effects Instead and have been learning how to use it. I Filmed With Kiel today and filming only took a few minutes and wasn’t a particularly formal, but we shot it the way we could and was successful in doing that.

Filming for the 2nd of may

We started to film the ending scene for my film, and we also filmed the beginning of my film to in miles house,
The start of filming didn’t go so well because I planned to do voice over’s in a quite room but everywhere was busy and we did it in an empty science room, where there was noise anyway, I was planning to get miles and James to do a voice over so I could film them in long shot ots style , my actors would wear a small ipod earphone in one ear so as a script prompter, but we couldn’t put the sound film on the ipod successfully, so we continued filming anyway, we did some tracking shots and close ups instead because the college atrium was absolutely busy and we couldn’t film is successfully, but we adapted and shot in close up instead and also filmed tracking shot that I wanted, albeit not very good ones but it was a style that I wanted to incorporate, or copy from films I watched. we then we able to film in miles house which was interesting cause I was planning to film at my but since his house was free and close by I decided to film there, and since it was allot quieter, Miles was able to relax more and we got a more interesting Performance, I even acted in it myself, with miles doing camera work, from pov shot, from where he was sitting, we were able to get longer take with a more fluid acting on ms, and we got Ecu on detail like picking up glasses and keys, one small problem is that since we were using a Sony camera, one that we haven’t used before, we were sure how to use focus or exposure, and there was a little problem with exposure in my shots since there were windows behind me, but the silhouette was that sharp, and doesn’t hinder the viewing experience that much. But all in all it was a good day of filming, and have nearly finished, I only have pick up shot I need to do, refilm Kiels bits, two starts editing, I was also wondering about putting in 2 more scenes to add to the film. But I will see if I have the time.

23rd of April Filming

We decided to film our biggest action scene of our film. which is a chase involving two first diploma students, played by Ashley and Dudley getting chased by Miles and James, which involved various locations and alot of shots, and we manage to finish this scene with in 1 and a half hours, but because here was action and multiple people helping us and acting, concentration was a big issue and at the end it was very hard to get across what i wanted them to do, but after an ambitious scene we manage to get what we wanted and after some editing it looked ok, but there was a problem that the tape got dirty because there was no case to put the tape in, so when we captured, the sound and image quality slightly diminshed but it can be masked using editing.

Filming on the 22nd of April

I filmed on the 22nd of April in a bid to finish my drama of pretty soonish, and we have only a few week to finish and hand it in so i needed to do it, i left it for a few weeks because i thought miles and james would be filming and although the filmed a little i still could of filmed mine in the caps , but anyway filming on the 22nd gave me time to plan so this is how it went.

I wanted to do at least three scene which would be my key scene and i booked out time in greenscreen room to do it, which i did, and we managed to get three scene near to done, only the last part on the third needs finishing but i have to do it later in the day, we did voiceovers, for trackiing shot which i think worked well, i used master shot and close up to get a range of coverage in my film,
One problem though which keeps buggin me is that i never put on the right aspect ration, i always forget so some shot i had to redo and just crop in editing.

I think Miles performed well, but James Brown need some time to get in the role and at first was extremely reluctent to get into the role, but after some discussion and help from miles and me he got into the role well and even had the confidence to do some of it without script.

and in evaluation of the day i believe that we did well because we filmed most of the film now and have a few scene to go but we did all the dialogue heavyscenes and have only 4 scenes to film which are action based with little dialogue.

Tuesday 18th of March

We Started to finish the scene, of the green screen room but our actor didn’t get till 1 when college starts , I should of invited them to come earlier, but when we started filming, guess what, we were interrupted and still haven’t been able to finish the scene, we had some good footage but no scene or scenes that we wanted, and we didn’t plan for the holiday because we didn’t know when they started, so we may have to film everything again when we get back, if our actor hair grows fast, but I will be doing more work and trying to prepare better for my film, when we get back.

Monday 17th of March filming

I filmed today on the Monday and had planned to film three scenes, film two in the morning and one at the end of the day.

I woke up late today which wasn’t a good start, because of leaving planning late and going to sleep late, so I got to college later and was going to star filming and I wanted to get some elastic bands for my green screen scene so I went to Tesco and they had none there but I got some Chocolate minstrels and drink to keep the cast going and keep them filming.

I went back to film but the green screen and Mac rooms and editing rooms, all my locations were full, and I chose Monday to do these scenes on the basis that they would be empty, although at the time I didn’t realise that I could of kick out another group that was doing a stop motion project.

I finally got to film in the green screen room and my cast together like and was going through a scene but people kept coming in which I had to tell them to be quite, and some left but what I didn’t realise was, is that Sarah's publishing course were gonna come in to do a lesson there, which I didn’t know was gonna happen, so we couldn’t finish the scene, and again all the computers are being used so we couldn’t film.

When we got another chance to film in the green screen room again we started but filming was slower because of concentration loss. We did a bit but still haven’t finished the scene and we had to shoot again because the microphone wasn’t on so no sound was being recorded. And then Sarah had another lesson in there so we had to leave. We went to another class but no computer were available and my actor didn’t want to shoot in a busy classroom. So I said to one of my actor he could leave and I would film close up with the other but no chance to film ever materialised.


And when I went home and looked at the footage it turn out to re recorded over some, which meant a some of our footage got lost. So we didn’t get anywhere near our targets of filming done and will have to refilm on another day.

Today taught me that I have to keep allot more concentration, maybe have more people crew to help out, Keep vigilante on microphone and playback, and make more time to prepare a shot because of this, also to have more of a plan on booking a classroom, which I would of done had I know you could, but this is my fault for not finding out, also to keep people out of the room for the comfort and to keep the concentration of my actors and also I need to plan out extended filming days as I will have to film nearly all scenes again tomorrow.

Weekend

I'v had forgotten but in the middle of the night, i realised that i need continuity in this project miles miles need the same grren top and hoodie on, to make it realistic.

Day 2 of filming

Filming John and Chris scenes on the 14th of March


I decided on the Friday that I would film just 1 scene because we would be doing other work like the stop motion project and also Sarah’s theory lesson, and after we did all that and got ready we decided to do one scene which is the where Chris is going to college and we quickly meet John who is Chris’s friend and they have a quick conversation about the problems of self expression.

I used Kiel and Miles for my Actors of John and Chris. And I used a long shot establishing the scene and medium shot that kind of act as a master shot because it has both characters in, I then just used over the shoulder shots.

I used this because it provide coverage of a small scenes, because it would be quick to do and also because we can film the actor line for line each and the use two track in editing, so it will be easier for me to edit, I also use a number of take on each line as well though so they can get a variety of performance recorded though.

I also used a mike so it would focus on our character and take out any ambient sound.

We were able to film quickly and not take too much of my friends time. but one problem I might of had is that the microphone might of not worked, and although we can here or characters easily speak there is quite a bit of ambient noise and I will have to take a close look when I capture and might use a sound mixing program to make it clearer.

Also one small mistake that happened was when we finished shooting the main scene we thought we get another long shot and medium shot, which we filmed but somehow the microphone was off and there is no sound, but this does not pose too much of a problem because there was no dialogue and we could just film some wind noise and put that on, so all in all we shot another days of filming pretty easily.

Day 1 of filming

Production Diary for the 13 of March which was yesterday.


Filming


We Started film Chris and the main part of the film today, after many cancellations from finding the actors to do it and after all of them didn’t replied or didn’t want to do it, I Decided to use my friends as crew as actors in the film.

The disadvantage's of doing this for my production is that I would have to adapt my shots for the actors, for example I couldn’t do long takes or tracking shots, getting expressive, acting emotion from them would be hard to do as well, since they are not actors. Which would require more Filming time to film. Concentration on the shoot would be harder to maintain because they aren’t as committed to the film or more acting for the film then it would be if it was there production. Or a professional actor.

The advantage of using my Friends though would be that I will get it done, I already have a working relationship with them, and we are friend so we can have some fun while filming it as well.


On the day of filming I Decided that I would start filming the bob scenes because I filmed the other half with a professional actor some months ago, and it would be a good start to finish those scenes off as well as having an easy entry for my actors to start filming with, Nothing to long are requires the most concentration and I think if my actors have a good start in the beginning they are more likely to finish the film with me.

So the only person acting today was miles, and I tried to get a few takes to see if Miles performance would improve, I was also trying to film as quickly as possible so as not to block the corridors and to make us a much as possible the lower sound noise, when classes aren’t coming in and out of the room. We didn’t use a boom mike because we filmed the other half of the scene without and I wanted to easily maintain continuity of sound,


Although one big problem when we were filming and didn’t realise until moved to the next scene after finishing one was that we had filmed in widescreen. Which broke continuity because we hadn’t filmed the other half of the scenes in widescreen 16.9 but in normal 4.3

So I had to make a decision weather to film the rest of it on widescreen or on normal ratio and I decide to film it on widescreen, perhaps because the contrast between the Ghostbusters which we film normally and the other which we filmed widescreen and it could make it better aesthetically because people will look and know a difference and perhaps know which one's real and which one the in movie and also because it would look nice to have the change between them, although we would have to stretch out bobs video a bit and cut it but we will see in editing if it will work.

Also another thing I had to work with was trying to get the crew and actors on board to do my film because at first there was a bit of resistance to making this, maybe because they haven’t been apart of the process creatively and maybe also because they have there own film the need to make soon, so it all add to the pressure, we all might have to be in each others film now so we have to do our best.

But anyway we finished filming and I did what I wanted to do on that day so I think that was good that we did meet those targets.

Final Major Project- Production Diary

Hey this is my blog that i will use to write down my production dairy so as to make me unreadable writing into clear type, for my teachers