Construction Post 22: Our main shoot session

On reflection, I think that our main shoot went well. Despite planning on shooting more shots than we had in our test shoot, we worked efficiently enough to complete our task in roughly the same amount of time it took to film during our test shoot.

Our group decided that it was best to capture a variety of different ideas for certain shots, so that we had a large choice when it came to editing, and we succeeded in doing this. This was especially useful for one of our more difficult shots, the pan, where the camera had to pan between two characters and then seamlessly pan back to show another character.  We had a variety of different shots planned for this sequence, and experimented a lot on the day, including shot/reverse shots for the exchange of dialogue as well as the pan itself. We worked well as a group to experiment with each others ideas and shot a lot of footage in an efficient manner so as not to waste time.

Sayo preparing the camera for the pan

We changed a number of things from our test shoot, and whilst a few did not work, most of the changes worked really well:

• We switched the actors of Cherish and Lucy, as we thought that they would be better suited acting the other's role. The actors worked a lot better in their new roles in the main shoot and, because we gave them a script in advance so they could become familiar with their new lines, we encountered no problems.

Top Row: Test Shoot
Bottom Row: Main Shoot

• We also had some new shots planned for the sequence to increase the screen time of characters such as Cherish. The new dialogue worked really well and did not majorly interfere with our shoot time, meaning none of our actors were staying longer than necessary.

• We added some lighting to the shot where Raj is tapping his foot, and the effect came out very well.

Lighting Raj's foot shot

• We tried out a contra-zoom on the shot where the detective reveals that Peter's body has been found. We did this by moving the camera back on a dolly whilst also zooming in on the detective. However, it was very difficult to get the framing consistent whilst doing this and did not create the desired effect. Therefore, we opted for a straightforward zoom, like we did in our test shoot. 

Because it worked very well in the test shoot, we tried to share out the duties of cameraman and director as fairly as possible. Because I was involved in the majority of shots as an actor, I was delegated the role of cameraman whenever the shot did not contain my character, most notably the close ups on the teenagers.

Sayo and Emilio alternated between cameraman and director between the rest of the shots to try and keep the duties as even as possible. This method worked really well and meant we all got our chance to be involved in the technical side of the shoot.

The main problem we encountered as a group was when we forgot to turn off the overhead lights before filming and shot an hour's worth of footage before realising our mistake. Although this meant we could not use this footage, we were able to reshoot the footage very quickly to make up for the wasted time and, luckily, we did not encounter any problems with our scheduled shooting time for actors because of this mistake. 

Overall, we worked very well together as a group during the main shoot, and I enjoyed it a lot. As well as working well shooting our film opening, we also had a good time in our breaks and between shots, which made the day really enjoyable.