Filming Diary

We filmed all of our footage over the space of two days, this was so that continuity of factors such as the weather could be maintained easily and due to the fact that there were two locations in which we were shooting in so we filmed a location a day for two days.

Day 1
We began filming our opening scenes during the early morning, this is so that we do not need to rely on any artificial light and it makes the morning scenes seem like they are morning. We filmed the first few shots and soon realized how important it is to check for continuity mistakes as they are very easily done due to moving around between takes. This was reduced by the length of our shots however still became a problem that we had to take a great deal of care of. We have changed a couple of shots due to complications or if on location we felt that another would be better.
We then moved outside to do the various shoots on the way to the train station, at some parts we added or changed what was happening as we were walking, we would be walking along and I would hold the camera and film the actress talking for a moment which we could then use in the final piece. We felt that it was important for the weather and lighting to stay the same for this external part so we shot extra footage, much more than we needed so that when we get to the editing stages we have enough shots and we can take what we want and leave what we don't need. We also began playing our song on my phone as we walked so that we could get a taste for what we aim to finally do, we can create a fast cut montage using short clips and if the characters are already going with the beat of the song it works even better. We only did this with a couple of shots such as one where they are walking round and infront of the camera and my foot lands right infront, this was so we could synchronize our walking speed with that of the song. It was at this point that we noticed that due to the white balance of our camera for a split second it had to go white in the footage. We plan to use this to our advantage during the editing stages as we can use it as a natural fade to white. These ideas came naturally to us as we began filming, we soon found ourselves thinking, what about this shot, or what if we move it over here? We had to finish filming for the day however because the sun had begun to go down and this was the section of the film that we planned to shoot during the next day of filming.



Day 2
Today we began by shooting the train station parts of the music video and on from there, we found a shot that I particuarly liked which was as the other actor and I run up the stairs have the camera pointing into a convex mirror in the corner, this allowed for an almost wide angle feel to the shot. We once again overfilmed, getting shots of trains going past, arriving and people on the platform that we can use later to set the scene more. We then did other shots on the train that could show that we were traveling somewhere, I did other shots such as walking out of the train station and into the town. We then filmed various other shots as the characters in our music video traveled to the bowling alley, the lighting at this point was good for what we wanted as we began filming at the point that we stopped filming the day before so that continuity of light could be upheld well.
Unfortunately on the day of filming it was the weekend of halloween, we didn't think this would have been a problem however the lighting in the bowling alley had been turned right down and replaced by UV lights. We overcame this by using the lighting effects on the camera and setting it to 'night mode' so that it picked up even more light. Following that we shot the scene in the arcade, like the day before we began shooting various shots of anything as well as the shots written in our storyboard so that any clips that we don't like could be replaced with that.
We finished the day by traveling back, by this time it was night time which rounded the music video off nicely, I filmed some shots which worked very well, such as the close ups of feet and the bus driving away. For this we needed to sit on a step for about ten minutes waiting for the bus to drive away but the final effect came out very well, also during the drive home from the station I shot clips out of the windows to use later on, I filmed the entire drive home just incase there was something that we could use later on, unfortunately a lot was rather shakey however some was usable and I intend to use it when it comes down to it during the editing.