HOW OUR FILMING WENT

We had the whole of last week to finish our filming. We were successful in doing so and completed our children's opening film sequence.

We began our filming in the college library as it was in our minds a recognisable location for our audience. The week before our filming began was our planning week, we decided then that we were going to do our opening shot in the library of the college. Our first shot was a shot of the Winter Ball poster, which then zoomed out onto a group of girls talking. Sarah Jebb put herself forward to do the camerawork, me and Lauren decided that we would be the directors and direct the framing of the shots and the positioning of the characters and Aggie played the role of one of the girls in the group. Sarah struggled with the filming and found it hard to get the shots how we wanted them to be so I then put myself forward to do the camerawork as i had had experience in doing filming before hand. Lauren and Sarah then joined the cast of the girls. I struggled doing the opening shot but with practise I was able to perfect the zoom onto the group of girls.

Even though we got permission to do the filming in the library the week before, we were asked to film somewhere else as we were too loud. This threw us off course a slight bit but with some deliberation we decided we would find a different location in which to film the same shot. We hunted around the college and chose to film in the Costa cafe. This was the best available location to do this sequence as the cafe in our minds was a recognisable and relaxing location for the children watching. We set up the camera and tripod in the cafe and i positioned the girls on a table in the cafe. We decided that we would place the Winter Ball poster above the table on the wall. The opening shot was of the poster then the shot zoomed out onto the group of girls talking about the ball. Once I was happy with that shot I moved onto doing different angles of the girls. I did over the shoulder shots, shot reaction shots and high angle shots. I think that these shots worked really well in our film and the girls acted really well. They discussed what they were going to wear to the ball and talked about who they fancied that were going. We felt that these topics of discussion were suitable for our target audience as they would be able to relate to the conversation in a reasonable fashion. I did many takes on this sequence of shots until I was happy with the outcome.

When we had finished the conversation sequence we then moved onto the over the shoulder shot of the 'mysterious' boy in the cafe. I positioned the boy on a table at distance from the other table where the girls were sat. I made the boy sit so that his body was on diagonal to the girls and put the camera behind him so that the audience were able to see that he was looking at the girls without seeing his face. I feel that this shot worked very well as it created suspense because the audience can't see who the person is but are aware that they are not meant to be looking at the girls. Sarah then filmed the next shot which was an over the shoulder shot of the 'mysterious' boy scribbling at the Winter Ball poster in anger. The shot pans down from the boys head onto the poster. Sarah filmed this shot and was very good at it.

The following lesson we then continued with our filming. The next sequence was an establishing shot of the college. This shot then tracks a person walking through the college grounds, through the corridors and into the refectory. On the day that we filmed, we were unable to get into the refectory so we had to rethink this sequence and we were also unable to get hold of one of our actors who played one of the girls so we had to adapt. Instead of doing an establishing shot of the front of college, Sarah came up with the idea of filming the establishing shot from the balcony of the hall. This turned out to be a very good idea because it gave a sense of the viewer having a higher status and it looked good as well. We also thought that it would be a good idea to film the three girls, Sarah, Lauren and Aggie walking into the college. We thought that this would be good as the audience can recognise the characters because they were introduced to them at the start of the film. This can allow our audience to relax as they feel more comfortable watching. I set the camera up on the balcony and tracked the girls walking into college. I only had to do one take of this shot because it was straight forward. I really liked the way it looked on camera so we carried on filming. I then told the girls to stop walking before they got into college. I got down from the balcony and began filming them from behind as if I was a person walking behind them. This sequence was all in hand held as it gave a very good effect and in my mind was more interesting to watch. I then tracked the girls walking through the corridors of the college and then into the refectory. This sequence was also good and i only needed to do one take as it was a simple sequence. We thought that this whole sequence worked well as children watching would be able to feel like they were there in the shot which to them would seem very interesting.
Jebb filmed two boys playing ping pong and discussing the Ball. Aggie Andrews and Lauren Vyse directed this sequence and told the boys what to say. We then moved onto filming a different sequence which took place in the refectory as planned. Lauren and Aggie filmed this sequence. For our audience to understand the plot even further we used more people who talked about the Ball. Two boys in the refectory talked about who they were going to ask to the Ball. We thought that this would be a good topic of discussion as our target audience would be able to relate to it.