Shoot Day

The shoot day overall was a success - we got most of the footage we wanted and we definitely enjoyed doing it. Everyone contributed to the film effectively and suggested helpful ideas.

Setting up was an important part of the process to make sure everything could get done efficiently. This involved blocking out the light from the windows on the doors in our location by sticking black card over them; underneath the doors also brought in unwanted light which we hadn't thought about before, and so improvised by putting bags of quavers along bottoms of the doors, which surprisingly worked.

We only needed one lamp to get the lighting effect that we wanted, and so after setting this up with diffusion we simply moved it around the room with the camera to get the lighting right for each shot using a cross-lighting technique.

 

As fore-mentioned, I played the lead character, and wore the dress used in the test shoots. The only difference was I did it barefoot to make her seem like more of a traditional slave, but in this case a metaphorical one. I also wore less make-up so that it didn't distract from the rest of the imagery, as well as to look younger and more innocent.

A few of our friends agreed to be extras in the film, to play the background shadowed figures, and they were also useful throughout the day as runners. They helped us set up the equipment and brought food to the set from the student union during the lunch break. 

In order to get the shots we needed we followed our initial storyboard and photographic storyboard, which acted as our shot list without having to write another one out, and shot on a DSLR, as this is best for photographs.

As well as photographs, we did film some of it as video footage though, just incase we did want to experiment with moving image as well as still image in the edit. We managed to get most of it shot, however the last part of the narrative where the girl now wakes up in a black dress and cloak to match the others, wasn't shot very well, particularly in terms of lighting, because we had to rush filming towards the end as we had to hand the key back for the room. Despite this though, I think it could possibly look effective without this bit even in the narrative, but it can be decided in the edit.