The Film Shoot

We started filming early on Sunday morning at an indoor location: the apartment we had decided to film Kym's end scene in. After much debate whether or not to call off the shoot due to weather conditions (snow) we decided to put our faith into the weather forecast, film some footage inside and see what the weather turned out to be like later on in the day. We had all the equipment ready, including three cameras (two JVC camcorders and 1 Canon EOS 550D), a carne, a dolly, green screen, should rig, tripods, boom and clapper board.

It took some time to set up the equipment for the first scene, especially setting up cameras and formatting SD cards. Whilst the technical elements were being taken care of including members being trained on the boom mic and a voiceover being taken, Lucy and Abi were busy setting the mise-en-scene for our first shoot. This included making the room look like a stereotypical teenager's room with clothes strung around the floor, but also, as Kym is meant to be deeply distressed, placing key props around the room such as 'with sympathy cards', alcohol bottles (to connote reckless behaviour since the death of Joe) and a photo frame with a monochrome photograph of the actors of Joe and Kym. The curtains were drawn and drawings around the room were taken down to connote her lack of caring and her being shut out from society. An evident theme running through this scene is 'black and white' purposefully placed with curtains, bedding and photo frame for binary oppositions, previously seen in thrillers which the group has analysed such as 'Seven' and the french film 'Them'.

The weather seemed to be over-cast and fairly dry for the next scene, which was the perfect weather conditions which we had hoped for. We went to Healey Dell, where we set up the crane to do establishing shots and filmed Joe's suicide scene. We didn't experience many problems here, only with the public who infrequently walked past on the viaduct on which we were filming. Wild tracks on the boom for sound purposes were taken for the final edit here. We recorded diegetic sounds of the phonecall which we could later edit onto the tack and forward it into the mix to have more impact on the viewer, and divert their attention onto the phone.

Our third location was Cloughbridge Resouivour where we were going to film our opening scene. There were hardly any problems here apart from the unfortunate incident regarding Abi, who when we were using the green screen, cut her leg on barbed wire on the other side of the fence, but this was quickly resovlved as we had taken procautions and had a first aid kit in the car which we could use to 'patch up the injured'. We are all getting reasonably tired by this point, having been on the shoot for 8 hours already, so we were keen to get the filming completed as quickly as possible, as we were also losing light and wouldn't be able to film the scene in the dark. However, the sun which was lwer down in the sky - ready to disappear behind the hills was perfect for us as it connotes a romantic setting.

We used a hand made dolly as seen in the pictures above, where I had baught some piping and made to wheels invert and built the frame so nice tracking shots could be filmed.