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.

27/11/09

Today was our last lesson before we had to film and Jenni was absent from our group today. We were meant to receive our filming permission from the Bath Film Office, however, we didn't as Jenni didn't actually send off the e-mail. So, we used this time to contact all the relevant people so that we could go ahead and film in all the locations that we had previously decided on. This was very time consuming as I had to ring up many different people just to speak to the right person for that one location, and then I had to do this for every location. We also had to make sure that our storyboard had been finalised so that we could stick to it on the day of filming. We organised what costumes both Abi and Jack would be wearing in preparation for the following week and then we were satisfied knowing that we were prepared for our day of filming and that we were just waiting upon Republics permission to film outside their shop in Southgate, which we were going to sort out in the time between the next lesson.

20/11/09

Today we confirmed the locations of where we were going to film as a group. Abi then produced a storyboard for how our film was going to look, so we drew images of what the shot was going to contain and below we would write any movements/mime/gestures or any dialogue, sound (diegetic or non-diegetic) and camera angles. Me and Jack worked on the film treatment where we had to to fill in things like a synopsis of our film, the people in our group and what role they would play in helping to produce our film, the timings of our scenes and a detailed explanation
about our film. Jenni filled in an application form which was meant to be sent off to the Bath Film Office to enable us to have permission to film in our particular locations, however, we soon found out that she failed to do so.

13/11/09

Today we went around Bath and filmed for a few seconds each of our locations. We did this because we needed to have a rough idea of where we were going when it came to our filming sessions. We filmed locations that we thought represented the gothic film appropriately, so things like; archways, staircases, pillars, lamp posts and general gothic architecture. We wanted to use the less obvious forms of gothic structures so thought of several places in Bath that were pretty to look at, resembled the gothic theme and the places that people may not have first thought to film.

4/12/09

Today we worked with Sarah and Chris from suited and booted film company. We were introduced to our filming cameras and learnt about the different components to the camera and how they worked. We were then given a task where Sarah told us what to focus on when filming then we had free rain to shoot it how we wished. As the Camera operator in the group, I filmed three different shots of Abi and Jack outside the college. When we returned to college we playbacked the scenes that I had shot and talked through what worked well and what had gone wrong. We talked through this with Sarah and we all agreed that because of our chosen style of film, we didn't need as much camera movement as i had used

13/11/09

Today we went around Bath filming our locations as they will play a main part in our film. We came up with 8 different locations, being; Helting Close near Bath Spa, Railway Close Tunnel near the railway station, Walcot Street staircase- leading to Roman Road, Sydney Gardens riverside, The Royal Crescent, The Circus, Laura Place fountain and the new Southgate shopping centre. We decided on these 8 locations because they were the less obvious places to choose but still promoted Bath in a way which would make potential film makers want to produce their films in our city. I feel that the locations that we have chosen to shoot our film in should be successful as they show the beauty and the architecture of Bath, yet not using the most popular landmarks of the city.

6/11/09

Today I wasn't here but the class were introduced to suited and booted film company and the Bath film office. Sarah Strickland gave us our brief to work from.

We needed to make a 3 minute film advertising Bath, representing the theme gothic. They brainstormed ideas fitting the brief and came up with the idea of a lost woman searching for her love. As a group they decided for it to be a silent film with dialogue boxes and to be shot in colour but edited in black and white.