Rehearsals took place on the day of filming. This was because it was the only time we could get everyone together due to people's busy timetables. As we needed all crew and actors around we had to pick a day where everyone was available. This day fell on Friday 2nd May. Everyone ran threw the script and practiced before starting filming on that day. Once everyone was confident we filmed.
However, we did run threw the script with the crew during class. This was so all the crew knew what was gong on and we could think about production alongside the script more. This helped when we got on set to work out how we would like everything to be in the shoot and actors reactions.
During filming the crew would give the actors prompts about how they should be feeling/reacting different situations. This was to get the best overall footage and as the actors had only learnt the script earlier that day it was sometimes hard for them to remember what was going on.
Monday, 19 May 2014
Monday, 12 May 2014
Reflection on filming - Ellie
I was slightly anxious prior to filming as I was not acquainted with both of the actresses, and I didn't know what to expect. However, Deanna took instruction well, and we had no problems with either of them and overall they did quite well.
I think the actual process of filming okay, despite our worries leading up to it - the weather stayed constant across the span of our filming, we captured some interesting shots, and I think the time that we filmed outside (early afternoon on a weekday) meant that we were interrupted by pedestrians and vehicles much less than we could have been otherwise.
Despite this, we still struggled slightly with the outside location, as we wanted somewhere quiet and vaguely empty where it would seem 'idle' and, although this was mostly the case where we were filming, there were parked cars about. We figured that the parked cars weren't a major problem and we'd just try to keep them mostly out of shot, but vehicles kept passing on the road and were increasingly becoming an issue because we continually had to stop filming as they passed or wait for a passerby to get out of shot.
I was slightly anxious prior to filming as I was not acquainted with both of the actresses, and I didn't know what to expect. However, Deanna took instruction well, and we had no problems with either of them and overall they did quite well.
Due to my camera's sound not working properly, we planned to sync the footage taken from mine to the sound from Victoria's; because of this we planned to film simultaneously to ensure continuity, make filming go faster (as we had a very limited time to record), and so we could sync the sound. This enabled me to take shots from further distances as I did not have to be close because whatever sound my camera captured we would likely not be using. However, we had some trouble with positioning shots so that Victoria and I didn't catch each other in frame accidentally.
I think that we got enough shots to make our TV Drama to a good quality but unfortunately, due to us not filming chronologically, we have a few continuity errors that we didn't notice and fix while filming. I don't think this matters too much because the few shots where this has happened aren't vital but I'm afraid that it might still affect how long the overall production will be.
Overall, I think it went quite well and, having edited some of it so far, I think it looks quite good - especially as we were not sure if we would even be able to produce a good finished result.
I think the actual process of filming okay, despite our worries leading up to it - the weather stayed constant across the span of our filming, we captured some interesting shots, and I think the time that we filmed outside (early afternoon on a weekday) meant that we were interrupted by pedestrians and vehicles much less than we could have been otherwise.
Despite this, we still struggled slightly with the outside location, as we wanted somewhere quiet and vaguely empty where it would seem 'idle' and, although this was mostly the case where we were filming, there were parked cars about. We figured that the parked cars weren't a major problem and we'd just try to keep them mostly out of shot, but vehicles kept passing on the road and were increasingly becoming an issue because we continually had to stop filming as they passed or wait for a passerby to get out of shot.
I was slightly anxious prior to filming as I was not acquainted with both of the actresses, and I didn't know what to expect. However, Deanna took instruction well, and we had no problems with either of them and overall they did quite well.
Due to my camera's sound not working properly, we planned to sync the footage taken from mine to the sound from Victoria's; because of this we planned to film simultaneously to ensure continuity, make filming go faster (as we had a very limited time to record), and so we could sync the sound. This enabled me to take shots from further distances as I did not have to be close because whatever sound my camera captured we would likely not be using. However, we had some trouble with positioning shots so that Victoria and I didn't catch each other in frame accidentally.
I think that we got enough shots to make our TV Drama to a good quality but unfortunately, due to us not filming chronologically, we have a few continuity errors that we didn't notice and fix while filming. I don't think this matters too much because the few shots where this has happened aren't vital but I'm afraid that it might still affect how long the overall production will be.
Overall, I think it went quite well and, having edited some of it so far, I think it looks quite good - especially as we were not sure if we would even be able to produce a good finished result.
Rehearsals - Ellie
Due to a mixture of clashing schedules and the late timing in which we had organised who exactly our actresses would be, there wasn't enough time to enable us to have a day (prior to the day of filming) of rehearsals. Instead, on the day we did a table-reading like practice; this involved us first going through the story and script with the actresses, ensuring everyone was aware of the story, what's happening (both plot, and for filming purposes).
During filming, we, the crew, also provided prompts for the lines during filming, as well as prompting to remind the actresses how they should be feeling/reacting because, especially for Deanna (Playing Felicia), it was difficult for them to remember what their characters should know up to that point as we were not filming chronologically and they had only learnt the script earlier that day.
We also often had the actresses do short runs through the lines before we began recording, although this was not always necessary because we were able to take our time and film line by line as it's not live and we knew we would just be able to edit it together during the editing process - we did this because we did not want to put additional pressure and stress on our actresses and have it show through in the final product. This worked out quite well as it gave us a little leeway with filming and enabled us to get the shots we needed at a decent quality but in a way so that it overwhelmed neither us nor the actresses.
During filming, we, the crew, also provided prompts for the lines during filming, as well as prompting to remind the actresses how they should be feeling/reacting because, especially for Deanna (Playing Felicia), it was difficult for them to remember what their characters should know up to that point as we were not filming chronologically and they had only learnt the script earlier that day.
We also often had the actresses do short runs through the lines before we began recording, although this was not always necessary because we were able to take our time and film line by line as it's not live and we knew we would just be able to edit it together during the editing process - we did this because we did not want to put additional pressure and stress on our actresses and have it show through in the final product. This worked out quite well as it gave us a little leeway with filming and enabled us to get the shots we needed at a decent quality but in a way so that it overwhelmed neither us nor the actresses.
Issues and how we overcame them - Ellie
We encountered a multitude of difficulties before filming even began; the first, and what I think was the most major issue at that point, was not having a concrete idea. This set us back from filming for quite a while as we not only spent too long trying to come up with the idea, but we then had trouble ensuring everyone was on the same page.
This translated through when writing the script as we didn't all have the same views and I had to spend my time helping Victoria with writing it - the actual writing of it was prolonged because we were defining and solidifying our idea as we went, which meant that at each stage we had to spend time making sure we agreed with what was happening.
This, in turn, made my ability to do work awkward because I was unable to start the storyboard until we had a script.
We also had problems with casting actors/actresses to be in our production. We had problems with this for multiple reasons, such as; we don't know many people that we would be confident in asking to help us, people we could ask were unavailable due to preparation for upcoming exams, and the posters from the talent report Cheryl and Becky did got no responses. This was extremely stressful as we were in the week that we needed to use for filming if we wanted to leave enough time to edit and we felt there wasn't much we could do other than attempt to think of last resorts.
Luckily, we came up with Becky's sister (whom enjoys acting); unfortunately though despite her being willing to star in our product, we couldn't use her because of her Uni schedule and our schedules conflicted for the week we would have needed her. However, Becky and Victoria then got in contact with others who were available at a time we would be able to film.
This translated through when writing the script as we didn't all have the same views and I had to spend my time helping Victoria with writing it - the actual writing of it was prolonged because we were defining and solidifying our idea as we went, which meant that at each stage we had to spend time making sure we agreed with what was happening.
This, in turn, made my ability to do work awkward because I was unable to start the storyboard until we had a script.
We also had problems with casting actors/actresses to be in our production. We had problems with this for multiple reasons, such as; we don't know many people that we would be confident in asking to help us, people we could ask were unavailable due to preparation for upcoming exams, and the posters from the talent report Cheryl and Becky did got no responses. This was extremely stressful as we were in the week that we needed to use for filming if we wanted to leave enough time to edit and we felt there wasn't much we could do other than attempt to think of last resorts.
Luckily, we came up with Becky's sister (whom enjoys acting); unfortunately though despite her being willing to star in our product, we couldn't use her because of her Uni schedule and our schedules conflicted for the week we would have needed her. However, Becky and Victoria then got in contact with others who were available at a time we would be able to film.
Sunday, 11 May 2014
Evaluation - Victoria
First of all the assignment set out to a good start, it was slow in places but all together the pre production work was coming to life. However the more work that got completed over time, the closer we came to doing work related to our idea of which didn't exist at the time. I think not having an idea for a long period of time definitely threw us off and set us back a lot, and we spent a lot of time dealing with writers block just unable to come up with do-able ideas. Keeping in mind we couldn't go 'all out' in a way, we couldn't over estimate our production value, of which most of our ideas consisted of.
The biggest challenge for me was writing the script, it held me back personally, and took the longest out of all of the work i had to do, this was down to lack of knowledge over how to layout and approach the script itself. Thanks to Ellie I got through it, she helped me with setting it out and teaching me basic techniques when it came to doing something I was not confident in.
We also had to keep in mind of potential actors starring in it, as we couldn't be in it ourselves we knew finding people we knew to be in it would be an issue as we weren't too familiar with people willing to put themselves in front of a camera and act for us, to settle this Cheryl set out a Talent so we coudl hold auditions for possible actors, this wasn't successful due to lack fo replies. We were at this point desparete to find people so Becky got in touch with her sister who was unable to film due to her uni course getting in the way, she then got in touch with another friend who was up for the part. I then got in touch with my friend Leah who was happy to help out.
Filming itself was a challenge but I think we got the footage we needed to get by, if we had more time it would have been more planned out and we would have more thought out shots that linked ect. I think the quality of our footage and the idea behind it is good enough to push through and prove the efforts we went to.
Editing is still a work in process and will unfortunately not be up in time for the deadline, if we had a few more days I know it'd probably be done in time to a good standard. Due to using multiple cameras editing is of course going to be the biggest challenge as we need to sync audio for each transitioning shot which is something we've only seen be done in TV and not actually practised ourselves.
The biggest challenge for me was writing the script, it held me back personally, and took the longest out of all of the work i had to do, this was down to lack of knowledge over how to layout and approach the script itself. Thanks to Ellie I got through it, she helped me with setting it out and teaching me basic techniques when it came to doing something I was not confident in.
We also had to keep in mind of potential actors starring in it, as we couldn't be in it ourselves we knew finding people we knew to be in it would be an issue as we weren't too familiar with people willing to put themselves in front of a camera and act for us, to settle this Cheryl set out a Talent so we coudl hold auditions for possible actors, this wasn't successful due to lack fo replies. We were at this point desparete to find people so Becky got in touch with her sister who was unable to film due to her uni course getting in the way, she then got in touch with another friend who was up for the part. I then got in touch with my friend Leah who was happy to help out.
Filming itself was a challenge but I think we got the footage we needed to get by, if we had more time it would have been more planned out and we would have more thought out shots that linked ect. I think the quality of our footage and the idea behind it is good enough to push through and prove the efforts we went to.
Editing is still a work in process and will unfortunately not be up in time for the deadline, if we had a few more days I know it'd probably be done in time to a good standard. Due to using multiple cameras editing is of course going to be the biggest challenge as we need to sync audio for each transitioning shot which is something we've only seen be done in TV and not actually practised ourselves.
Issues and how you overcame them - Cheryl
During our pre production we did not have many issues. We split up the work equally and got in with it. Once it came to filming time we did encounter a few issues.
We realized we had not yet picked actors for our tv drama. As it was running quite late and we needed actors ASAP we decided holding auditions was not the best of plans. This was because holding auditions would take up a lot of well needed time. Instead we turned to our friends to see if any of them would help out. We found someone with acting experience and used her as the main character and then another friend as the secondary. This resulted us in having more time for filming and editing.
As our tv drama was meant to be in a deserted town we did have trouble with traffic and people during the filming process. To over come this we would wait until all traffic/people had past then carried on filming. This did take longer but in the end we got the overall product we wanted.
We realized we had not yet picked actors for our tv drama. As it was running quite late and we needed actors ASAP we decided holding auditions was not the best of plans. This was because holding auditions would take up a lot of well needed time. Instead we turned to our friends to see if any of them would help out. We found someone with acting experience and used her as the main character and then another friend as the secondary. This resulted us in having more time for filming and editing.
As our tv drama was meant to be in a deserted town we did have trouble with traffic and people during the filming process. To over come this we would wait until all traffic/people had past then carried on filming. This did take longer but in the end we got the overall product we wanted.
Tuesday, 6 May 2014
Reflection on filming - Victoria
Despite the amount of stress and worry we went through in terms of filming it actually went really well. We didn't know how we were going to approach filming, we knew we were using two DSLR camera's one was mine and the others was Ellie's but we didn't exactly know how to use two cameras to capture a scene, although it wasn't until I realized how to edit with two cameras that it's all down to syncing audio.
With Ellie's camera we were relying on backup shots and different angles because her sound wasn't working properly so I had to capture all the sound with mine and then later sync the audio with her shots in editing.
We didn't really know what to except when filming, especially as our main actor was a friend of Becky's and we didn't know her making us conscious about directing her in terms of shots and where to film so she's comfortable. A problem we faced was filming multiple angles with both me and Ellie in the same room, we struggled with positioning so we wouldn't capture the other cameraman such as the over the shoulder shots.
We filmed a good portion outside which was also a struggle as we wanted a desolate location where it would seem really quiet and 'idle' which was hard because there was cars about which we figured could be cars left by their owners but the passing cars were an issue and we found ourselves having to stop filming every time a car passed or if somebody walked by we'd wait for them to be out of shot.
Overall I feel like filming well really well, we will not truly know the result of filming until we finish it and look at the final edited piece, however I do feel like it could have gone a lot worse, we had a well through out script, a good storyboard and good intentions, so it went well for a group who didn't have high exceptions of a good end result.
Rehearsals - Victoria
Because organizing our actors to be in our drama had such late timing we didn't really have time to rehearse the lines so we ended up doing a table read like situation where we went through the story and the script with the actors and made them aware of the story, whats going on, how their characters are feeling and we helped set the scene in order to get them into character.
Technically we rehearsed before our actors said their lines, because we could take our time and go line by line as it's not live and we're not expected to be consecutive in terms of speaking as the actors had only been given the script on that day. We got into a habit of giving our actors time to learn their line(s) before we started rolling, as soon as they were ready we would press record with the lines still fresh in their memory, this actually worked out really well as we got into a steady routine of taking it bit by bit which didn't over throw us.
Technically we rehearsed before our actors said their lines, because we could take our time and go line by line as it's not live and we're not expected to be consecutive in terms of speaking as the actors had only been given the script on that day. We got into a habit of giving our actors time to learn their line(s) before we started rolling, as soon as they were ready we would press record with the lines still fresh in their memory, this actually worked out really well as we got into a steady routine of taking it bit by bit which didn't over throw us.
Thursday, 1 May 2014
Issues and how you overcame them - Victoria
We came across many errors during the run up to preparing to film. The pre-production work was a lot lighter and easier for me as it just seemed like harmless paperwork that I could take my time with, it was only until the more serious paperwork which heavily involved stuff to do with filming such as the script which I only finished today and took over a week, this was because our idea was very distorted and we weren't sure how to meaning I had to write it as we thought of ideas.
This kept going until we finally made our way towards the end of the script and we knew we had to wrap it up which gave us a concluding idea. I wouldn't have finished the script in time if I didn't have help from one of our group members Ellie who helped direct how to layout the script and gave ideas throughout. Since I didn't know how to lay out this script this of course set me back along with the lack of ideas.
Another set back was casting people to be in our TV Drama, we don't know a lot of people in or outside of college that we are confident with asking to help us out. We then resorted to setting Cheryl to do the talent report to hold auditions but got no responses and this was all in the week we needed to be filming. Casting was definitely the hardest part as we felt helpless towards anything we could do. Luckily we had to think of last resorts and started thinking of any possibilities as we were very desperate at this point, Becky then told us her Sister enjoys acting so we got in touch with her but unluckily her Uni schedule was too busy to match our filming schedule, Becky then gt in touch with someone else who is now available to film on a day we are all free.
This kept going until we finally made our way towards the end of the script and we knew we had to wrap it up which gave us a concluding idea. I wouldn't have finished the script in time if I didn't have help from one of our group members Ellie who helped direct how to layout the script and gave ideas throughout. Since I didn't know how to lay out this script this of course set me back along with the lack of ideas.
Another set back was casting people to be in our TV Drama, we don't know a lot of people in or outside of college that we are confident with asking to help us out. We then resorted to setting Cheryl to do the talent report to hold auditions but got no responses and this was all in the week we needed to be filming. Casting was definitely the hardest part as we felt helpless towards anything we could do. Luckily we had to think of last resorts and started thinking of any possibilities as we were very desperate at this point, Becky then told us her Sister enjoys acting so we got in touch with her but unluckily her Uni schedule was too busy to match our filming schedule, Becky then gt in touch with someone else who is now available to film on a day we are all free.
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