Reflection of Shoot - 19.11.11

  

On the 19th November, we filmed our third shoot, this time we travelled to Maidstone to film. Ali was unable to be present for the shoot, but Ben and Chris were able to go, as was our actor Harri Mulley.

We had planned the shoot in detail during the week, and had a shot list ready with us, as well as the high frame rate camera and tripod booked out from school. Ben also took his HD camera which we have used on other shoots. We met in Tonbridge in at 9:45, and drove straight to Maidstone. After a lengthly battle with the Maidstone one-way system, which we were not familiar with, we parked and headed to the centre of Maidstone to start filming.

The first shot that we filmed was on one of the busiest streets in Maidstone, where the majority of the shops are. For this shot, Harri stood in the centre of the street and stood still, and we set up the HD camera on the tripod and rolled the camera for 6:00 minutes. We plan to speed this shot up in the edit, so that it looks like Harri is standing still and the crowd are walking past very fast. This went well, and most people walked straight past as intended, although one family decided to stand right in front of the camera for a while whilst deciding where they should eat their lunch, so we will have to cut this part out of the footage when we edit.

The next shot that we completed was one where the camera follows Harri, and then pans across to somebody wearing a space invaders T-Shirt. Ben filmed this one, and didn't use the tripod as the shot needed to track behind Harri before panning to the right. Chris played the character with the T-Shirt, and this shot took us several takes as we had trouble keeping the camera steady without it wobbling. However, we did eventually achieve this, and were pleased with this shot as it we felt that it was important to have more shots with movement in our video.

After this, we walked down to the river, and filmed Harri walking along the river and sitting on one of the bollards. Above the river, there is a bridge which runs over the river and the motorway, so we also filmed here. The biggest problem we had filming in this location was the general public, as there were a lot of people walking along the bridge and we didn't want anybody else in our shot. We had to patient, and just wait for people to walk by before continuing the film, so this took us longer than expected.

As our SD card was now short on space, we decided to have lunch and use the time to plan the filming for the afternoon and clear some space on the SD card. After lunch, we visited a music shop, and asked the manager if we could film inside, as we want some more interior locations in our video. We were allowed, so filmed two shots in the shop. Because the lighting was very different in the shop, the footage initially had an orange glow, which did not fit in with the rest of our footage, so we adjusted the white balance so that the footage in the shop looked more consistent with our other footage. 

We then went to the park in Maidstone, and filmed there. The autumn colours of the leaves looked good on camera, so we thought of a couple of new shots to film with the trees in the background so that we could incorporate these shots into our filming. We were very lucky with the weather, as there was a completely blue sky and the sun was shining. We tried to utilise this as much as possible, and experimented with shots where the camera circles Harri, and as the camera moves round, the sun becomes visible behind Harri. The filming in the park went well, apart from a teenager on a bike who was adamant that he should appear in our video, and cycled into a number of our shots, so we had to wait for him to be out of shot each time before filming.

The last of the filming we did in Maidstone was back at the river, as the sun was now lower and we liked the light coming off the river. We filmed Harri sitting on a bench, as well as a shot where he spins around holding the camera whilst singing, which we are very happy with as a shot. We tried to film nearly all of these shots using the rule of thirds, as they are the most aesthetically pleasing shots. On our way back to the car, we filmed in a sub-way, and Chris put the fish eye lens on the camera. We filmed three shots here, firstly Chris filmed a shot where the camer tracks the length of the sub-way to Harri at the end. Ben then filmed a very similar shot, but when he reached Harri, he sang a line from the song. Finally, we positioned the camera, still with the fish-eye lens on, so that the end of the tunnel was in the very centre of the frame (we used onscreen markers for this), and Harri run down the tunnel jumping against the walls, which we liked as it was an intertextual reference to the film and play Billy Elliot.

By this point, we were once again out of space on the SD card and nearly out of camera battery, so walked back to the car. After a final battle with the one-way system, we drove home. Overall, we were very pleased with our shoot in Maidstone. We were lucky with the weather, and filmed everything we wanted to. The only problem we had was the general public, but this was easy to deal with by just waiting.