Main Shoot (How we got this far I don't know)

Its a frosty Monday in school and while we capture the footage of our masterpiece "the Case" I thought now would be a good time to reflect on the weekends filming experience. Disaster loomed over us from the previous 3 weeks experience of the project and a general pessimistic mood swept the room but it was safe to say as we set up our scene that the four of us were ready for some quality takes. Sadly we had a limited budget and could only afford pizza to pay actors but I suppose it's a school media project.

Day 1 : The Office / The Murder

After setting up a messy table in the back room for "the Office" and creating some great low key lighting with a small lamp our mise en scene looked promising. Our actor was ready for the role of detective and the villain had not yet turned up due to the fact he wasn't needed for these scenes. We split up the filming fairly taking around 3 clips each and rotating roles throughout. The corridor scene was generally successful and we got a good group of angles to use for the first set of match on actions, where the Detective walks from the back room, down the corridor, opens the front door, looks out and puts the chain on.
We then proceeded to the second location, the office itself where we managed to get a really good master shot of the area and lots of good pans for the montage of his desk. When the killer arrived we proceeded to do the killing itself which took quite a few takes, but the lighting worked really well in the end. It created good suspense and we didn't blow any bulbs (yes!). Both actors looked really great for the parts and acted them out accordingly, making the whole film have a sense of finally coming together.
After a brief break for some Pizza Go-Go all parties concerned were much more the merrier for the filming experience, especially myself (I got a whole one to myself, who doesn't like sweetcorn on a pizza?). We looked after our actors which was greatly appreciated. We then proceeded to the garden scene at around 9:00pm (not too conveniant) where the villain was making his escape. We finally got to use the studio lighting which I had been aching to do from the start of the project. We got some brilliant shadows and quite high key lighting, yet retained the night time feel using some blue filters to give it an eerie moonlit glow. We only managed to get up to the gate before Daniel needed to leave so we thought it unfair to continue without him.
By this point in the day people were also starting to get a bit stressed with eachother due to being in my house for the past 7 hours without many breaks from filming and planning. However at the end of the day I got some good footage on my own camera for the video blog (which will be coming to a blog near you at the end of the project!). Day 1 was over and about midnight I attempted to watch Sin City but fell asleep so thought it best to rest up for Day 2. Feeling slightly more positive about the whole project in general I got a good nights sleep!

Day 2 : The Garden / The Alley / Re Shoot & Extra Angles

The day started off with a positive, I was in a good mood when the group arrived at my house having spent the majority of the morning asleep and done little to nothing all day! However, this positive feeling lasted less than an hour as we got calls from both of our actors saying they would not be able to get there until 6:30pm and that Simon needed to leave between 8 and 9pm. I was quite happy with a lot of the shots from Day 1 but the rest of the group seemed very disheartened and I did get quite annoyed at them.
When we proceeded to take some extra mise en scene shots our first pointless argument occured. Myself and Simon were debating what shot number a certain shot was and both got very aggravated about the matter. After this I felt a bit rubbish as I felt I was letting the group down a bit. I was very tired and started to get stressed with everyone. This led to a generally negative filming experience for most of Day 2. Also when my brother got to the house at 6:30pm he'd just had a bad day so was not in the mood for filming. He was very eager to get all the scenes done as fast as possible and this led to a lot of takes being rushed and having to be re done. However when we got into the garden again, everything started to look up.
With the villain in the mood for filming everyone seemed ready to get it all out of the way and over with by the end of the evening. We proceeded through the alley and got lots of great scenes for the film and I was very pleased with the overall shoot. There was a brief moment of despair when we thought we had broken a light but it turned out that it was only the bulb (Thank goodness) and we had a spare anyway.
When all was finally over and done with you could hear the excitement in our voices as we took the last shot, or rather relief! Although I'm certain we'll be back next weekend for another ridiculous set of takes and re shoots, I am glad to say we have a huge number of shots to edit in the time being and could have a rough version of the film by the end of this week!

Hasta luego for now compadres

Nick