For the first week of production our group focused on preparing and carrying out the first location shoot. This shoot took place over one weekend with one night-time shoot on the Saturday and an all day shoot throughout the Sunday. The footage we captured over these shoots consisted of promo shots, filler shots, lip-syncs and rehearsals for narrative shots which were scheduled for the following weekend.
Saturday
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| First page of our shoot board for Saturday |
Our first location for the Saturday shoot was at an old fashioned lamp post near Sian's house. As the shots we wanted at this location were filler shots and lip-syncs my role was solely on performing. Sian took on the role of cameraman and Meera directed. The shots we planned to film differed between hand held shots and tripod shots as we wanted more variety and creativity when editing. However, after filming the tripod shots in a CU we decided to scrap using the tripod at the location and instead capture a lot more hand held footage; we felt that the tripod made the shots too static and therefore boring, in contrast we felt the hand held shots brought the scenes to life whilst also allowing us to film in multiple angles and framing within each take.
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| Meera giving me direction between takes |
The second location we filmed at on the Saturday was on the road by Sian's house, we decided to keep all of the roles within the group the same for these shots. For this location we wanted to mix up the shot types by adding character movement with camera movement; we achieved this with a tracking shot of me walking down the street lip-syncing to the camera. We particularly liked the lighting at this location and in turn decided to film some filler shots, as you can see below. The lighting form the street lamps gave an outline to my head in a LS and added a shadow to half of my face in a MS.
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| A filler shot with back lighting from the street lamp |
Sunday
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| First page of our shoot board for Sunday |
On the Sunday our main location was in and around Meera's house, i.e. her back alley, her living room, her attic and staircase. Our aim for the day was to take a selection of promo shots, primarily our back cover for the digipak, film our rehearsals for narrative shots and capture the rest of my lip-syncs so that only studio lip-syncs remained. As I was required to be in every shot, Meera and Sian split the filming and directing and switched throughout the day. Due to myself taking on the main role of AJ I felt a lot of pressure to give a convincing performance, however Sian and Meera was great and gave help motivate me throughout the day to keep me on track.
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| Meera filming one of my outdoor lip-syncs |
Once we had finished with capturing all of our lip-sync footage and promo shots that we had scheduled in for the day we decided to practice some of our narrative shots for the coming weekend. As well as practicing and experimenting with framing for the couple shots of myself and Sian we decided to script the argument scene between me and Sian; we believed this would be great preparation for Sian and I as we would be able to learn our lines.
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| The script for the argument |
Overall, I think we had a successful first shoot weekend as we managed to film all the shots we wanted and manged to get in great preparation for the coming week. Some of the shots we filmed on the weekend actually became some of my favorites in the final edit and I believe as a group we worked very well- a great confidence booster for the stressful studio shoot week.
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