4/12/09

Today was our first day of filming. Firstly, we learnt how to use the proper film cameras by two professionals from suited and Booted film company named Sarah and Chris. We were taught how to change things like the aperture and White balance on the camera, or if we wanted to we could keep it on autolock so that the camera would do it itself. We were also taught things like how to load a tape and cahnge the battery in the camera. I had to pay attention to everything that they were teaching us because I would be operating the camera when filming. Once we got familiar with the cameras and how to use them, each group was sent off with a task to complete, so that we could come back and watch the clips and see where we had made mistakes and how to rectify them. We went outside the college and across by the coach park where we filmed 3 shots at different angles. When we went back into the college and showed Sarahour clip, she noticed that I was trying to incorporate to much movement into the shots and for our style of film we didn't need to do so, which in the long run made my job a lot easier by not doing so. After this we then went up to Walcott Street where we shot our first scene to our film. This scene was of Abi running up the stairway that led to Roman Road looking for her love. We decided to include part of the wall before we actually filmed the staircase as there was an interesting looking alcove that made the shot more original. We tried the shot from different perspectives of the steps, so a shot from the bottom of the staircase and a shot from the top. After feeling content with the footage that we had, we then moved on to our next nearest location being Laura Place at the end of Pultney street. It took many attempts to set up the the shot as there were lots of cars around that were red and we purposely needed to keep this colour out of the frame. We wanted the positioning of the shot to be interesting so I asked Abi to sit up on a level of the fountain and sculpt her body properly to look as if she was looking around for her lover at a higher level. I really liked this shot, the composition was really unique and the subject of the frame being Abi looked really pretty and quirky in the way that she was sat on top of a fountain in the middle of a roundabout. After this we went and filmed by the Bath Spa at Helting Close, despite the rain we managed to get a decent scene with Abi and Jack together in olden times walking through the street all happily in love, it did take several attempts to get the shot because of the composition that we wanted and there seemed to be many members of the public who were wearing red, so we had to keep cutting the scene. However we did get a shot that we were happy with in the end. We then moved on to our last location of the day being the train station tunnel. We found it difficult to get the right lighting in here as it was lit by a red light which meant we had to play around with the aperture and the white balance a lot so that we could actually see Abi on screen. When we finally managed to get the right aperture along with Sarah and Jo's help we shot our last scene of the day of Abi running through this very dark, dingy tunnel, which although the architecture of the actual tunnel wasn't very gothic, the fact that it was dark and weathered evoked a gothic atmosphere to the scene. Overall, I was very happy with how our first day of filming went and pleased that we were still on schedule to finish on time.