The Shoots

I don’t want to sound like I am whining, but it is time to tell you about how each shoot has gone on.

The first shoot was shot in a house, a car and a club. The problem was we ran out of time to do everything, we couldn’t shoot the club scene. This was a problem because the main character had to look the same for all the scenes we were meant to shoot that day. He had to have stubble for the rest of the shoots; this meant we would have to wait until the other shoots had occurred before filming the club scene. Continuity is thus a major issue. However what we did shoot looked fantastic, especially the scenes with the soldier.

The next shoot, like the first shoot ran into problems because we ran out of time, this meant we only shot three scenes out of the six we had to shoot that day. This is because the site we were filming at did not know we were filming that day, even though we had been in touch with the organisation repeatedly before the shoot. We could therefore only start shooting at 1, and when the site closed at 4:30, it meant we didn’t have long to shoot anything.

The third shoot went well, however there was nobody from the organisation on the site, even though they said they would have to open up especially. We went ahead with the shoot, but we couldn’t let the organisation know we were there. Still they did know we were filming that day and frequent emails were sent before the shoot. It would just have been peace of mind that the organisation knew what time we had arrived and left.

Problems arose with the forth shoot, because the sound recordist on my crew (the only other major crew member) could not make the shoot that day. I managed to get somebody to help, but the footage shot that day was a little too shaky. I am not going to have a go at the person who helped me out, because they did a massive favour. As well as this they have a lot of experience making films, and have made several feature length films. The problem was the person was not used to the equipment that they shot and used that day.

Again the sound crew member could not make the fifth shoot, and I could not get anybody else to help out, this meant I had to shoot and record everything myself. What was shot that day was great; however I could not concentrate fully on both the sound and the visuals. Thankfully there was no dialogue to record that day.

The 6th shoot went well to begin with, the sound crew member could make the shoot and we had shot the majority of what we had to shoot that day. One scene was meant to be set beside a fire, and of course a thunderstorm happened. This meant we had to wait for over two hours until we could start filming again. This meant the shoot lasted from 11 until 6:30, instead of a few hours it was meant to take.

The next shoot, wasn’t really a shoot, rather it was a recording session for the voice overs that was going to be used in the film. The actor got so lost trying to get to the recording studio that we had cancel the session, which I was fine with, it just meant the production of the film would take longer and thus, I would have less time editing the film.

Finally the 7th shoot was back at the same site as the second shoot, filming the rest of the scenes we missed that day. The sound crew member could not make that shoot, but I don’t think they would have been able to record anything because, again, the organisation running the site didn’t know anything about this reshoot. As well as this they had a laser tag group on the area we were filming in which made a lot of noise. This means we had to scout around them, and more importantly the majority of the scenes we shot that day would have to have its sound done in post.

Despite all these problems, what we shot over theses seven shoots looks very good. ONLY ONE MORE SHOOT REMAINS! The club shoot we didn’t have time to film on the first shoot, and I will let you know how that goes, along with the voiceover recording session. Just to put into context of how much we have filmed. When I edited all the scenes together, the run time was thirty minutes. I have to make a twenty minute film and this means I have a lot I can manoeuvre with when it comes to the edit.