Filming Day 2 - 27/11/2012

27th November 2012: 6pm - Late

Crew: Myself, Leon, Hannah B, Jen and Jacob

  On November 27th, we met our Actress met at University before filming. Because Me and Leon had a seminar until this time, I sent the rest of the crew a copy of the script and asked them to go through it with Fiona, our actress. However, I was a bit disappointed when I arrived to find out that nothing had been done. This in turn meant that I had to spend precious time we could have used filming, talking the actress through what she needed to do. 

  Once Fiona was happy and had read/learnt the sections of the script we were to film - these being planned scene 7. Although this seems to be a lot, many of the scenes are relatively short.

Lola walking around the christmas tree - this shot had great production value as a gentleman looked at the map in the right third of the shot as we were filming, demonstrating how clueless Lola is.

  Initially, we filmed the sequence where Lola walks through town, looking confused. We wanted the setting to look overwhelming and so I chose to have her walking around a large christmas tree in the city centre. This gives the illusion of her being 'small' and young in comparison. Throughout the film, it was planned to present her next to gates and fences to symbolise Lola being 'caged in' her own body and not being able to escape from her child-like persona. I will speak more about this later in the blog and include frames of the end piece to demonstrate.

  When filming the scene, the sound recordist had initial problems with the SD card in the Marantz, so I therefore had to help him solve that issue through taking the card out and unlocking it. He then proceeded to have issues of the sound not working - this turned out to be quite a trivial problem as it was due to the headphones not being plugged in! Much like the last shoot, I also found it hard to communicate with the sound recordist as he would often leave the space we were filming to record atmos tracks instead of syncing what was being shot - this became even more complex when he would stand in the frame whilst Leon was filming and would have to be asked to move out of shot. Apart from this, I have however found that Jacob has been very organised and contributed to some ideas for the piece.

Frame of POV sequence of Alley.

  Once we had completed that section of the filming, we went for food to warm up. On the way to our next location, we walked past an alley that I thought would be perfect for the scene where Lola sleeps alone on the street. Originally, this was written to be a park bench, however, I felt that this mise-en-scene would create a more eerie atmosphere and help get the desired reaction from the audience more easily.

Frame from Alley Sequence.

Frame from Alley Sequence.

  When walking down the alley, we noticed that a light would come on through the use of a sensor, so I asked Fiona to jerk as this came on to highlight her character's sensitivity to light. I found that I worked very well with Fiona and she had no problems completing any of the directions I have her. The purpose of this section of the film was to demonstrate Lola's fears and how they appear even scarier as she tries to sleep. My plan was to use sound design and editing as a huge factor to put this across - through overlaying scary images, symbolising whats happening in her mind, along with the use of sound that overlaps and gets increasingly louder.

End result of what I envisaged.

  After filming the alley section of the piece, we progressed to film elements within a 'pirate scene' that had been staged within the city centre as part of the christmas decorations. Because a lot of these models had quite a scary look about them in the dark, it gave us a good template to portray Lola's emotions when she is alone in the city. Lighting played a great part in this scene as not only did is cast sinister shadows upon the faces of the model pirates, but also presented a great shadow on a building of a sword as it lifts up and down. We used this particular shadow to our advantage and also filmed a nice close-up of Lola's reaction.

  Overall, I think that every member of the crew worked really hard on this shoot as it was incredibly cold and got quite late. I think that the shoot could have been a lot more efficient if the producer was there to ensure things worked smoothly, for example, helping with the issues in sound, as I found that this did distract me as I was trying to do my role as director to the best of my ability.

A section of the shot list - Many more were added due to the impulse scene in the alley.