Production weekly reflection- week 8

Last week I was unable to gain any response when I contacted Sam during the half-term holidays. This week my aim was to successfully communicate with him to establish filming days, which I did. We planned to film on the 1st of November, 2nd of November and the 3rd of November to cover shots of Sam in Hainault Forest, Studio shots and flashbacks that our narrative male has of the, "good times" between himself and his girlfriend. We obtained all the shots from Hainault that we needed, although due to the difficulty of finding a guitarist willing to film, we were unable to record any guitar playing at the forest. This makes me reconsider the location for the guitarist as it takes an hour for the journey to and from Hainault Forest and this proves to be too time consuming considering how the day light begins to fade at half-past four in the afternoon. 

During the filming at Hainault forest, we had to change a few shots, such as Sam walking up a hill, lip syncing at the same time. We replaced this shot with him sitting on the hill with his legs folded up to his chest just as he had sat in our photo shoot. This was done because the outcome of the shots whilst walking up the hill were resulting too shaky and completely unusable; we thought about the photo shoot we had done earlier and what positions he had been photographed in, so we could later match the same picture with his position in the forest, to have a faint line of continuity between the digipak and Music video. Unfortunately we were unable to get a hold of Harry Maxwell to film at Hainault Forest with, so we have decided to change the location to the field, to save time and still have shots of a guitar player for the instrumental performance.

Before Saturday 5th of November, we had not covered a large portion of the locations listed in our shooting script. I am very keen on using all the locations planned to represent the artist, however I feared that we may need to change a few of the planned locations. The volatility of my partner has lead to difficulties in filming and I found myself filming alone on a few occasions. Filming alone left me insecure as I did not have my partners opinion to reassure me. My partner and I kept regular communication towards the end of the week when we needed to film the narrative scenes, which lead to a successful London shoot. 

The development with the digipak and magazine advert has been progressing along with every filming session. Sam has been editing the ancillary products during lessons, to which I give my input and opinion. At the moment we only have rough templates because we need to complete the final 'metal door' shoot. Our byproducts revolve around pictures which need to be taken in front of the graffiti wall we planned to shoot in front of. We would have done this during the school week, however the location is in new cross; as it is so far, we have been unable to film there on weekdays and have planned to film next week Saturday. 



The guitarist has been difficult to get a hold of, and we are thinking of reverting to our last resort of using Rajiv to help us. I will try my best to contact Harry and confirm a filming day with him.

Filming on the 3rd of November did not go to plan, Sam was unavailable to film with me and the weather was terrible. I made the decision to film the shot planned to have a mise-en-scene of a park, on the field. This was to save on time, complete the shot and still make it to Ilford on time. Upon reaching Ilford I decided to film solely indoor shots as day light had faded completely and the rain became heavier. I first went to 'Bollywood Bowling' to ask permission for filming, which after a short discussion they agreed to allow. I shot Soraya and Talha playing arcade games and then moved on to Talha teaching her how to bowl. Later, I had to once again ask permission to film inside the restaurant, to which a waiter agreed and allowed us to film. I directed Soraya and Talha to playfully feed each other, whilst they did this I experimented with camera movement. At first I started with a "shaky camcorder" effect, as if a friend was holding the camera, then I reverted back to panning as it requested in the shooting script.

The filming session on the 5th November revolved around filming the Narrative in London, to which Sam accompanied us on. Working with the chosen Actors was very successful as they are outgoing and confident. Resulting in absolute minimal shyness and shots which reflected emotion. There were a few issues, such as not being able to use the picnic blanket on the grass; it had been raining during the morning and the weather seemed too dreary and illogical to have a picnic in. Instead, I replaced the shots, 52, 53, 54 from the shooting script, of them using a picnic blanket with more mid shots and close ups as well as long shots depicting the mise-en-scene. The dreariness of the day ended up working in favour for us, as the grey weather added to the emotion and depressing effect of the 'rejection shots'.


There were florist shots which we had not covered but we ended up filming them at liverpool st station. At first we asked permission from the florist at the station who directed us to the national rail office to gain official permission from the manager. We had a 20 minute wait and discussion and eventually gained the permission to film at the station with the condition we do not obstruct any one.

The targets for this week are to complete the shooting script and film on the 12th of november along with beginning to edit and creating the final template for the magazine advert.