Re-Shoot 2

On Saturday 13th of December we did our final shoot for the project. Overall i think it went according to plan and we managed to do everything that we had intended to do however there were a few minor hiccups which we had to overcome.

We all arrived to the shoot on time! So we thought that we would be able to begin shooting as soon as it got dark but once again we found ourselves getting caught up in a very interesting conversation that we could not pull ourselves away from so we ended up starting shooting later than we had planned meaning we had to rush some of the shots. Personally i think this was such a huge problem in all our shoots and as much as we tried to focus ourselves we found it so hard as we are all such good friends. Being in a group with friends is not always a good thing!

We also encountered the problem of our camera not having any batteries meaning we had to use the mains cable and therefore could not shoot outside. This obviously was not a huge problem as most of our footage is inside but it did mean that for the shot of the CU of the key in the door we had to improvise and shoot it inside with the door open rather than outside with the door shut. This seemed like a good idea at the time but then when watching back our footage we found that you could see the edge of the door and therefore you could tell it was open. We will therefore have to think of a way to some how cut the shot so that you cannot see the door edge. 

We all watched back our footage and found that there was a problem with the sound of the camera being too prominent in the shots and the shots being fairly grainy as we used quite dim lighting to create an effect. This makes our footage seem fairly unprofessional and in an ideal world we would obviously re-shoot it but we cannot so we will try to work around these problems when editing it together. 

We all worked really well as a team on Saturday as none of us were feeling 100% and we had to overcome quite a few unpredicted problems such as the camera batteries, and Nisha's family being in and therefore creating background noise. However i think we all pulled through and supported each other and therefore we managed to get our shoot done successfully and on time. Now all that is left to do is to begin editing...

Re-Shoot

On 9th and 10th of October we are going to re-shoot our sequence because when watching back our footage from our first shoot we found many errors and in order to make our sequence successful we feel that we should re-shoot.
We will all be arriving at Nisha's house at 2pm and then setting up the equipment. This time we will pay close attention to all the objects in the background as these are the elements that ruined some of our shots. As we need to wait for it to get dark before we can begin shooting, we will first start with various cut away shots that do not show the outside. We never shot that many cut aways before as we thought we did not need them but when watching back our footage we felt that they might help to add a bit of pace in our sequence. After we have done these cut aways we will then go onto shooting our main sequence.
Hopefully we will be finished shooting completely today so we need to be as vigilant and engaged as possible because if we waste time we will not get anything finished and then we will have to end up shooting again when we really do not want to be as we are already quite pushed for time on our schedule and we really need to begin editing our footage soon.

Reflections of the Group

On Tuesday Miss Blackborow made us discuss as a group what we thought was working well and what we thought we could improve upon as a group. We all sectioned off into our groups to begin with our discussions.
At first it was hard to think of anything as we all felt that as a team we were working well but as we started to think we all came up with a few issues that we felt were affecting the groups performance and if they were fixed we could work to a higher standard.
Some issues we agreed on and we all felt were extremely important. However some of them some people did not agree with so therefore we left them as smaller issues that could be dealt with later on in the project if they get any worse.
I felt that the main problem with our group is the lack of paper work. Its not the fact that we are not willing to do it, its just we never seem to be able to find the time. I feel that if we were able to allocate a few hours each to finishing off a few pieces of paperwork then our shoots would be alot more organised and things would run more according to plan. When bringing up this issue with the group we all felt the same on the situation and came to the conclusion that we would all try our hardest to do find the time to do a small section of the paperwork before the next shoot so that we would be up to date and therefore ready to move on.
Overall i felt this discussion was beneficial to the group as it helped us bring up a lot of issues that we were ignoring before and therefore we would be able to improve upon the general work standard of the group and the group dynamics.

THE REAL SHOOT!!

On Saturday 29th November we did our real shoot. We arrived at Nisha's house at 2:30pm and planned to begin shooting straight away to avoid getting behind again due to talking too much!
This did not go according to plan and we ended up starting late as we realised we needed the outside to be dark before we were able to shoot but once we begun we shot for 3 hours solid and managed to get all the footage we wanted.
I really enjoyed doing the shoot and our group worked well as a team. We came across a few problems which we did not plan for during our test shoot but we managed to work around these and overcome them.
The thing that i found hardest about the real shoot was getting the continuity correct. It was very hard to make our shots look plausible due to things around us changing and objects being in the shots that were not supposed to be there. When watching back over a few shots after we had shot them we found many faults with the continuity and ended up having to reshoot them. When we were doing our test shoot we did not encounter as many problems as we did not include as many shots and our test sequence was far less thought out. When shooting our trailers back in Year 10 we never had to worry about the continuity of the sequence so it was a lot easier then whereas now there were a lot more errors that we ran into. As it was an entirely new thing for all of us to focus on it made it a lot more challenging and difficult but i felt we tackled it well.
Another problem that we cam across was sound. Many of our shots had sound which was unclear or too soft which we had noticed during the test shoot but we thought that the use of the microphone might help. However it did not help so we decided that instead of using the sound with the shots, we just recorded seperate shots of just the sound which we will then group with the needed shot so that you can hear it clearly and therefore it will make more sense to the audience. This was another issue that we had never faced before because we have never really focused on sound when shooting previously. This is what made it a lot more confusing for all of us and brought to light more issues. I liked learning a new skill but i found that at times it was extremely complicated and sometimes frustrating as it could ruin the entire shot.
On Saturday, as Charlotte did all the acting, me and Nisha shared the shooting out equally between us. I felt this was beneficial to both of us as we were both able to have a time using the camera and therefore gaining more confidence. When one of us was not shooting we were always there helping the other person and giving advice which made the shoot run a lot more smoothly as we were able to get two peoples opinion rather than just one.
Overall i think it went really well as we achieved everything we had set out to do and managed to shoot all the needed footage. I cannot wait to start editing it together!