ILP Day- rough cut completion

The ILP day proved a great opportunity to complete my entire rough cut. I arranged for all my actors/actresses to come to school- thankfully they were all available at some point during the day- I managed to complete all of the filming I needed to get done.

Having to re-shoot in the school hall meant I needed to change the settings on the camera to ensure a good quality shoot, I found the correct setting for the lighting in the hall and the outcome was a high quality shot. There was no problem with filming and due to it being an ILP there was a dance workshop which I was able to film and perhaps use some if this footage within the trailer. However due to most of the school space being taken up by classes I was unable to shoot within the drama studios and only had the hall available to me for a limited amount of time. Nevertheless I was still able to complete all of the shots that I needed to get done.

During lunch time I rounded up a group of friends which I then filmed in one of the classrooms, I was lucky to be able to get a number of people at once as this was one of the shots I was dreading to film due to the direction of a large number of people, however I managed to get the desired shot I wanted concluding my filming for the day.

Into the editing suite with all my new footage, choosing appropriate shots and editing the footage into my anamatic in order to have a clear idea in my head the order of each shot. Thankfully I already had most of the sounds/music needed for my trailer which shortened the process when completing my rough cut. Obviously when producing my final piece I will need to improve the quality of the sounds, especially the voiceover, which I have decided to use Mr Smith, one of the drama teachers in school, provided he consents.

Filming at Becky High

With the gained knowledge that there were various different settings on the camera which could overcome my problem of lighting I went out again to film. My third actress from a different school enabled me to have another school location to film in. We were granted permission to film in their school which meant I had a range of different environments which would fit in well with the conventions of my trailer.

I used their school hall which has a grand piano where I shot the piano shots of Becca. Luckily due to Becca being a music student we gained access to the music rooms and recording studio- perfect locations for the genre of my trailer, musical.

The lighting at Becky High was a lot better which meant I didn't have to change the settings on the camera at all, but it will be good to know for when I re-shoot the shots in my own school hall.

Pleased with the range of shots I was able to film we wrapped filming up for the evening. Leaving me with the objectives on the ILP day to shoot any group shots, put together and edit my rough cut as far as possible.

Filming commences

The start of filming- last week I started to shoot a range of shots, luckily enough with the new HD panasonic cameras. 

During half term I came into school with the only available actress, which proved hindering as I was only able to shoot a limited amount of shots. Nevertheless it was a start- the advantage of using the school during half term meant that every location I needed to film in was available and empty, speeding up the process. 

However I was dissatisfied with the quality of the shots- the lighting available in school was atrocious, I was hoping that once I had uploaded the footage it would be of a higher quality, an evidently wrong assumption.

Once I had uploaded the footage the quality was below acceptable and therefore made it imperative for me to shoot again.

Back to school and finding the time that was perfect for everyone continued to be difficult. Time for me to go out and shoot my second actor (I adopted the process whereby I focused on the actor/actress separately and shot any shots which was solely themselves, later I would focus on the group shots. It was easier this way as it didn't waste time and also proved easier for one person to be available rather than a group all at the same time.) 

The second time out filming presented me with the same problem LIGHTING, moreover in the hall, which consequently lead me to poor quality footage, I decided to shoot outside, the natural lighting meant that the quality of the shots were pristine.

Back into the editing suite, with more poor quality footage- confused as to how I was going to overcome this problem one of my peers suggested I play around with the camera settings (why had I not thought of this before?!) 

With the footage I had- that was worthy, I uploaded it into iMovie at first on one of the apple laptops where iMovie kept crashing unexpectedly which meant I had to use one of the comptuers instead, which thankfully worked, this footage I then imported it into premier. I started to play around with the shots, using my anamatic as a guide as to whereabouts each shot needed to be placed. I endeavored to complete the rest of my filming during the ILP day and then hopefully also complete my rough cut in time for the deadline.