Filming Day One

Today we started our first day of filming, planning to shoot scenes 2 and 3. We met our main actor Adam (Ben) at the train station around 10:30 as he had travelled down from Preston, then headed across to Abi’s to meet our second actor, Dean (Mick) and collect all the equipment for shooting. After a short bus ride across town we arrived at the house pretty quickly.

It took a while to set up the equipment as we were not sure on how much light we would need to make the scene look realistic. Also, we soon realised one of the three Dedo lights we had brought wasn’t working. However, this wasn’t too much of a problem and we were able to light the scene well enough with the remaining two and use of natural light from the window.

During the week, we collect extra props such as takeaway boxes and cans to try and make the setting look more convincing.

Shooting the first scene out of the two we had planned took quite a long time. The most time-consuming element we found was moving the camera and tripod around after nearly every piece of dialogue due to the way we planned the storyboards and shot lists. Although it was a lot of work in a small amount of space, by shooting from so many different angles, we will have plenty of footage to play around with once it comes to editing.

Abi and Christie worked well together to collect a series of interesting shots, as well as improvising throughout to add extra shots or change things around. Chrissie, TS and I were on hand to help sound record, set up, help with extras like phone calls and move things around when needed.

Even though our actors had only known each other for a matter of actors, I feel they worked really well together and gave a convincing performance that the group were satisfied with.

Although the first day of filming was quite long, I feel it went really well. We achieved the two scenes in full that we wanted, and I feel the end product was better than what I had anticipated.