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Production

Production process 

I originally had planned to film my production on the 14th of march however multiple of my actors got ill this week meaning I had to wait until the week after. Initially I was very worried that I wouldn't complete my work in time I used this however I decided to use this week to plan out my production process in detail. I began by making a production plan:

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I originally thought that I would have 4 weeks to film however the first week that I was supposed to be filming on 3 of my actors were ill, then on the second week I was supposed to be filming I got ill and so did another one of my actors. This left me with only 2 weeks to film plus cutting out school nights which left me with only the week 29/03/24-06/04/23 to film. At first I was very worried about this. However as I will only be filming in one location with no costume changes  I believe I can film the majority of my footage in one long shoot which I will attempt on the 29th and then use the rest of the week for reshoots and any scenes I didn't have time to film.

I decided to use the time I had before filming to further cement my confidence as a director. I decided to make some storyboards for specific scenes which I wanted more of a visual for. For example the scene where the plughole transitions into the record player which follows of Wendy getting laughed at. I wanted to look at this scene in more depth specifically as it was a highly emotional scene so it was important to me that the emotions of Wendy could be understood by my audience. Making a storyboard really improved my confidence in the scene having an emotional impact which has made me feel more confident in my role as director. I also made a storybaord for the end scene as it had been changed so close to production I really wanted to feel more certain about the shots.

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Now I was ready to move on to thinking about my props and equipment. My list of props and equipment  were a canon camera, a tripod, camera light, fake acid tabs, a Ziploc bag and a shoulder mount. (see picture) originally I wanted audio equipment however as I would now be filming over halfterm my college would not let me take out any audio equipment. I decided to test out the audio of the camera with my sister before using it to make sure it would be ok (see below) and it actually sounded pretty good so I felt confident about just using camera audio in my production.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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29/03/24 (first day of filming) 

Before filming I laid out all my props/ equipment and checked over my prop/equipment list to make sure I had everything. I also printed out a copy of the shot list which I marked with a green pen during the shooting process to know which scenes I needed to film. 

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One of the main issues I had to face on the first day of filming was timing issues. One of my actors wasn't available after 7pm on the day of filming which I only found out about on the day. At first I was very frustrated and I wanted to move the day however this was the only day that all the actors were available for an extended period of time due to the cast size. This was a big problem for me as my music video is set in the evening. Luckily all the scenes her character (Faith) was in were indoors however I still had the issues of daylight coming through the window. in order to solve this I blacked out the basement window using black card and bluetak. (see images below)

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This worked really well and I was very happy with my problem solving skills. I decorated the room itself with red posters blankets and a red carpet in the preproduction process. I had one large stranger things poster that my friend lent me, one Mitski poster that my other friend lent me. A red painting thar I already owned. I also put up some Christmas lights to add some ambience and also suggest that it's at a wintery time of year.. I think the Mitski and stranger things posters will also help me appeal to my young audience as they are common interests amongst today's youth. I also added some more fun things to give the room some more personality and make it look more lived in such as a kermit toy, some bongos and a couple of drink cans.

 

 

 

 

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After this was all complete I could begin the filming process. I began the process by having the actors do a cold read where they just read their lines. We also practiced each scene before filming the individual scenes so everyone was certain about what they were required to do. I began the filming process with the scene where Maggie and Wendy enter the basement as this was the first scene shot in the basement. This scene was a little stiff at first so it took quite a few takes but I felt this was a really good warm up scene as it was an introductory scene so the actors got to introduce themselves in character. I think if I'd had more time however I would have got the cast to do something like a role on the wall which I did a lot in drama GCSE as it was a little difficult for everyone to get into character at the very beginning of production and from my experience acting exercises like this really helped me but time was a finite resource after scheduling issues so this could not occur, however if I was to do this again and the actors were not all under a level stress I would have sent the actors some exercises to do to help them understand their character as I think this would have made for a smoother beginning to production.

 

Adding in the lamp scene due to lighting changes. An issue I came across. when filming the scene where the group took the tabs was that the lamp was too bright and prevented some of the actors faces from being seen. I also felt that the ywlellow tones it created did not match the atmosphere of this scene and the scenes that I planned to follow as I wanted it to be dark and tense. To fix this I decided to add in a shot of the lamp being turned off. This was great as i felt it made the lighting change work narratively. You can see below the difference in this scene with and without the lamp and I think it is much better without and this shows.

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When filming the dancing scenes I made sure the lipsyncing was correct by having another actor who wasn't in this scene (the actress playing EDEN) use her phone to play the part of the song that matched with the scenes. The actor playing Freddie suggested I create shadows using one of the lamps in the room by angling it towards them and I was very thankful for his suggestion because I really loved how it looked. I was thankful that I had chose to work with a group of actors who I had worked with on multiple other projects as I think this familiarity allowed them to feel comfortable making suggestions like this which bread lots of new creative ideas.  

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I filmed the arguing scene experimenting with lots of different angles this was good as I had a lot of takes to pick from and I encouraged the actors to use a lot of body language to show their emotions like finger pointing, eyerolling, arm crossing and just speaking with their hands in general. I encouraged the actors to improvise with the lines I gave them so it could be more natural and I think this worked very well as I felt this scene has a lot of emotion.

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Everything was going really as I continued down the shot list in chronological order, avoiding the outside scenes. However when I began on the first outside scene my camera died as I had forgotten to charge it before the shoot! This was very frustrating however I plan to learn from this mistake for the second filming day.

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One of my favorite shots to shoot this day was the crisp bag shot in scene 5. I did this by cutting the bottom of a bag of crisps and then asking my actress for the scene to place one crisp next to the camera lense, she then removed took the crisp and ate it. This is a picture of how I shot this: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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02/04/24 

After watching back the footage yesterday I made a list of shots that I felt needed reshooting why and how I can shoot them better. I also wrote down the final scene I needed to film. I decided to cut out the first 3 scenes as it was taking up too much time of my music video and it didn't add that much to the plot. (excluding the introduction scene) This meant my music video now opened with the scene of Wendy and Maggie discussing ringing the doorbell. This helped with reshoots as it meant there were a lot less scenes to reshoot. This was my final list of everything I needed to film on wednesday:

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05/04/24 (second/final day of filming/reshoots)

Today was a little tense as due to schedeuling issues this was the last day I could film with the full cast! However I felt prepared due to my list of reshoots, scenes I need to film and my storyboard for the final scene which I made earlier. The cast all also arrived on time which was great. I followed my reshoot list in order ticking it off as I went through. 

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Refilming Wendy taking her shoes off: 

This scene was really easy to refilm. I just lowered the lights in the hallway and used the light from my camera instead. it gave the shot a lot more depth and detail and I'm confident it will look really good in the edit especially after colour grading.

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Rehearsing and refilming the dialogue in the opening scene: 

In order to get this scene right we did multiple practice shots with no camera involved of them saying the lines in character and experimenting with different tones and emotions until we decided on one idea together. I could see from this practice that both actors were a lot more confident in their acting and it definetly showed when comparing the two takes. Especially in the scene where Maggie and Wendy are let in by Freddie. 

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This was the scene before rehersals: 

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And this is the scene after: 

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Improving the laughing scenes with body language: 

Something that I didn't realise would be such a big issue with production was filming a natural laugh. Something about being under the camera made the actors freeze up a little. I had 2 techniques to deal with this issue. the first was taking a long headshot video of an actor whilst me and the other actors tried to make them laugh so I could cut clips out of it for example in the video below: 

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The second and more successful technique was looking at videos on YouTube of people laughing, such as this one and encouraging my actors to mirror their body language. This produced much better results as the actors said they felt more like they were playing a character instead of just trying to laugh 'naturally' so this is dedinitely a technique I will be using on future productions. as it gave me results like the ones below.

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Refilming the plughole scene:

Refilming the plughole scene faced a lot of difficulties as the angle that I used to show Eden's face in the mirror caused a shadow on the sink from my camera when I panned down. I fixed this issue by cutting this shot into to shots. The first shot being Eden looking in the mirror cutting after it pans down from the mirror. Then I moved slightly back away from the mirror and filmed the second shot panning down from the mirror and onto the plughole. This worked much better and as there is only a slight change in camera angle I don't think this will look jarring in editing. If it does however I plan to use a dissolve or fade transition to make it flow more smoothly.

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Refilming Wendy and Maggie's second conversation. I made three changes when refilming this scene; repositioning the camera to get the light of the door in the shot, rehearsing the lines with the actors more before filming and changing the lighting from white to blue. I liked the changes I made as I felt it helped the audience relate to Wendy more as the lighting makes the mood more melancholic helping the audience empathise with her mood. I  felt having the door in the background helped to build more tension as we see Maggie slowly revealed. The yellow light from the door also helped to create contrast in the scene with colour which I think made this shot much more engaging to look at. The only negative in the changes that I made was that scene was very dark making it harder to see what's going on but I feel confident that this is something I can fix with this with colour grading in the editing process as this is an issue I've overcome in a ot of previous productions.

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Filming the final scene I filmed this scene last in the filming process today. I did this because as there was no time for anymore reshoots I knew I would need to be checking over the footage a lot. I was glad I had made a storyboard for this scene as it made me feel much more confident about how the scene would look. I got a birds eye view by standing on the wall next to my house and filming from there. I used the shoulder mount to keep these shots stable. I used the blue light setting on the camera to create a somber atmosphere and checked over the footage throughout filming, reshooting until I was satisfied.

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I felt this day was much more successful than my first day of filming as I remembered to charge all my equipment. This day was entirely reshoots and I think that by having the actors perform scenes they had done before their was a real difference in their confidence in their acting and how comfortable they were around the camera. 

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Cast and crew feedback 

After shooting, I asked for feedback from the cast and crew on any improvements that can be made and what had gone well when filming, this will help me to improve on other projects:

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“If a problem occurred when filming you came up with solutions to make sure it worked in the narrative, particularly when the lighting was wrong in the scene, so you changed it in the script to make sure it made sense in the story. For example when you added the scene of the lamp being turned off to make the room darker"

 

"In the first shoot you didn't check all the footage during the filming process but I noticed in the second shoot you were careful to check all the footage before moving on to the next shot which made sure all the footage filmed could be used in editing." 

 

You were very clear on what was required from each scene but I think you could have explained in more detail what type of shot it was so we knew how to better position ourselves and rehearse the movements more as well as the lines to make sure we understand what is being filmed."

 

"You were a very organized director when it came to general time management and knowing how long each scene would take but we could have saved time by you being more prepared and remembering to charge all the equipment in the first shoot but I appreciate that you solved this issue in the second shoot."

 

This feedback helps by informing me what the cast and crew thought worked well and what they feel can be improved upon when working together. Next time, I will do more rehearsals and explain to the actors the types of camera angles and movements that are to be used in the scene. I will also work hard to remember to charge all my equipment in any projects I film after this. After receiving this feedback, I agree with how I can improvements and intend to take this with me on to future productions.

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