Filming

Filming went pretty smoothly, with no problems really arising allowing us to flow through it quickly. It was done over the course of about 3-4 Weeks taking place at around 7/8-10+ O'Clock. The issue we have noticed though is that we haven't included an estalbishing shot. However, this will only take a quick session to get completed so it's no real problem. We plan to get this done ASAP, maybe even later on today (25/03/11). since we have whent back to location, and reshot some scenes that needed retouching; also taking some more shot for example, filming heather walking to the door. we reshot this scene from different angles so that we can split up the first person shots.

 In our rough cut which we have put together, we've noticed an issue with one of the shots. Unfortunatly, in one of the shots of Heather (Dead character), you can see her take a breath. It's only minor and not too noticeable, however it is an annoyance. We don't have time to correct this now so we've got to stick with it.



Filming Location (In day light)



Over the course of our filming, we encounted that things were different to how we had planned they would go. Whilst it still went fine, it was challenging. We experimented with many different shots and, in the end, changed quite a few of the shots on our storyboard.

We had to improvise for some of the shots, at some point liam had to lay down and shoot without the tripod to get the right angle which the tripod wouldn't allow. Quite a few shots were challenging, for example, the panning was more difficult than Liam and myself thought, when the shot recuired us to pan both right and down, trying to keep the pace of the character whilst also framing another thing of interest in the shot.

Also, the cameras metering system could not be controlled manual whilst filming, so we experienced some lighting problems. In one of the shots, where the car is started, when the headlights come on the camera auto-adjusts to meter for the bright point of light, which darkened everything else in the shot. Thankfully, however, it wasn't really a problem because we felt that the effect was pretty cool and suited the dark, sinister feel of the film. Another issue with the camera, was that in some shots there appears to be large black bars scrolling down across the shot. I think this was due to metering issues aswell, and unfortutantly, it can't fix it now.

We did try to pre-plan the lighting, where liam, Scott and myself made a visit to olympus house (Where we filmed) to check out the lighting and to find out, based on the lighting, how we would shoot. The large flood light above the main entrance to the building provided excelent lighting which was very helpful. However, it did turn off sometimes and since we had no control of this we had to pause/cancel filming sometimes.



Running through the storyboard with the DV



We filming using Liams Nikon D90 SLR but one of the shots were using my iPod. The advantage of using Liam's camera over the DV Cameras provided by the school was that we could film in higher quality and resolution. Also, the ability to change lenses helped. For most of it, we used a 50mm Prime F/1.8 lenses; this allowed us to take good advantage of focus and depth of field. However, the D90, is a photographic camera mainly, with just the side option to record, so unfortuatnly the settings were limited in video mode. We filmed on the standard video mode with the ISO set to 400-600.

Since none of us hold a lisence yet to drive, in the shot where we had to car speeding off we had to use a 'stunt double'. We filmed Connor (Protanganist) climbing into the car, then switched the shot to a different angle where we switched him with his Dad (The 'stunt double'). This allowed us to film the shot of the car speeding off.

Overall, we're happy with the production we have compiled. Here is a link to our rough edit;