Shoot day

The day before our shoot I was in charge of making sure that we had all of our costumes ready for use the next day. I had to confirm with my group that they were okay with all of the costumes and that we had everything that we needed. Haydon was in charge of getting the props together; he checked up with us that all the props that he got were the ones that we needed. A couple of days before our shooting day we had a minor dilemma because Ashen didn't like the masks that we got for the robbers. Therefore, during one of our media lessons we had to go online shopping to find a solution, thankfully the mask came in time for our shoot day. Ashen created character profiles and scripts that would benefit the actors, as they would get into character more.

   <---Part of the group making sure that we have our guns ready for the shoot day

On the morning of my media shoot I felt quite nervous because I didn't quite know what to expect from my fellow group members and what moods they were in. We were going to shoot outside so I made sure to wear som

e warm clothes. Unfortunately the weather wasn't great as it was cloudy and raining.

My group and I were quite prepared when the cast arrived, I had set out all of the costumes and the masks by them ready for the cast to get into. Also, Haydon arranged Sasha the make up artist to come up and do a bullet wound on one of our cast members. Before we started to shoot we needed to make sure that the back of the van had the props needed for the scene. This involved Alen and me to bring some bits of paper and card board boxes to fill up the space. Whilst we were doing that Ashen was giving a pep talk to the characters and setting up the camera to film inside the van. 

Throughout the whole thriller we had two locations that were fairly close to each other. The first one was behind the studio at our school, we set up a van and opened the doors wide so that we could recreate the setting in there. Alen and I added cardboard boxes, sheets and added lots of paper to make it look filled up and dirty. This didn't take a lot of time considering the amount of time we took to plan the whole thriller. The second location was about a 2 minute drive from our school and it was known as the Peaslake viewpoint. We didn't have to recreate any of the settings around there, since we checked the road and area weeks before our shoot day. Sadly it was raining and it was a bit more hassle to film the on the road but we managed to capture the true England weather. 

On our shoot day I was in charge of making sure that we had all of our props and costumes set out and ready for the cast. Mostly my role was quite important in preproduction and Ashen and Alen were more focused on the actual filming of the thriller. At our first location we had Ashen and Alen in the van filming, whilst Haydon and I were shaking the van so that it would look like the van is moving, when it was actually still. At our second location I was in charge of holding the microphone for about an hour. We all took part in the filming process in order to divide the responsibilities and to make it fair. 

I think that I was really organized when it came to actually getting all of our props, costumes and even cast members together. Even though our group was unorganized in the beginning, coming to our shoot day we had most of our equipment, costumes, props and cast sorted. I also think that I was helping to lead the group in a positive direction of trying to actually conclude on our decision making and actually get somewhere with our ideas. 

On our shoot day our major problem was the weather conditions, but even so we managed to pull through. The first scene was fine as it was in a van, so the rain didn't effect the filming. Although, in the afternoon we had a proper outside scene where we were filming one of our characters walking up to the van and picking up a case. It wasn't that bad because the gloomy weather supplemented the darkness of the actual scene itself. Also, on our shoot day we were panicking about finding a bodyguard that would stand next to the guy who would take the case from the van, as he's such a high up figure the robbers would not even hesitate in trying to take the case back. Later on, we spoke as a group and decided that we wouldn't actually need a bodyguard in the scene and that by having him it would just complicate things. 

The most successful part of our shoot day was probably the scenes that we took inside the van, at our first location. It seemed that our casts' experience or even acting skills were quite good and they got the hang of the scene really quickly. Hopefully the scene will look as good on camera as it did in real life. Although, I feel like the end scene that we were shooting could have gone a lot better as it took us a long time to make sure that the continuity would be right. This was a part of the last scene that we added on, it was the doors that were being slammed closed, where at that point in the editing process we would have the titles go up. 

Out of our whole shoot day I think that I enjoyed filming the last bits as we were experimenting in different ways of either holding the camera or the different shots that we took. We only did this because we allocated a couple of minutes to try and shoot something that was not original that could potentially work it's way into our final product.  I look forward to start editing because my group and I have already figured out the different possibilities that we would want our final product to look, other than the original plan that is already set out. I can't wait to see the final scene when the doors slam shut because I think that it will have such a forceful impact on the whole sequence. 

I think that overall in my group we had very different people with completely different ideas of how to make this opening sequence successful. As good as it might be it was quite difficult as most of the times we had disagreements or misunderstandings. I think that our problem was that we couldn't just finalize ideas and that we just kept on debating about them, and by doing this we wasted a lot of precious time. But at the end we were given a talk by our teacher which got us back on our feet and we were really productive in the next couple of weeks. It is important that next time when I will be shooting that my group and I have everything most of the tasks complete before we start filming, as I feel at times my group was really disorganized. Also the fact that I was working with boys only made it difficult for them to understand my points.

Some photos of our shoot day: