In class after our presentations we as a group organised to shoot our script on Thursday night. We had access to our location after 9pm so that’s when we met.

Our plan for this shoot was to trial lighting at night and trial using the combination of smoke, lighting and the camera in reference to the script. The equipment we used was a collation of our groups personal equipment. We ran through the one scene which made up our script and decided where we wanted the lights to go and how we wanted it to look.

In terms of roles; Michael was both acting and director, Jake was camera operator, Jeremy was actor and Alec and myself were on lighting and smoke machine. Despite these being our “roles” we all contributed to the overall filming and all had a go at operating the camera at different points.

We only ended up using two LED lights and the car lights, we also added in one smaller LED light to back light some of the scenes. These lights certainly gave off enough light for the moody shot we were going for.

A difficulty we had was in terms of the smoke how to direct the smoke, how to get it in the section we want whilst being outside and who to make it subtle. These were something we constantly struggled with but it was interesting to see how the light manipulates and expands itself when smoke is involved. Perhaps it would’ve looked better without but we will have to wait to see the footage.

Another difficulty I had was filming inside the car, we decided to remove the rig for more space inside the car. However this meant that the shot wasn’t as stable especially filming in a moving vehicle. Its hard to tell how it will look on screen, but it may feel disjointed if every other shot is very stable and the car, handheld is slightly more bumpy.

I actually really enjoyed filming this scene, I am well aware that the people in my group are far more experienced in terms of filming, using cameras, lighting etc. than myself but I enjoyed learning from them and how they work. It was good to see how they would set up the shot to get what they wanted.

I am a very organised person and I think we definitely lacked in that pre production organisation stage. Despite having a script I think perhaps having a shot list, storyboard and a time sheet would’ve helped. Whilst its not as crucial for a small scene production if this was a larger production with more scenes we would’ve been extremely unorganised with time. I think perhaps this is the area I could help with further throughout the semester. Having these things planned out means everyone knows whats going on and we have a clear direction of what needs to be done by when.

So whats next ?

We have about 4 weeks left and one scene filmed. I think we will watch an review this and perhaps reshoot with different equipment. I personally really want to film an interior shoot and again test with lighting, smoke and learn from what we shot on Thursday.