Preparation: Me, Myself & I

Before i shot my film i decided to prepare my garage by going to B&Q and buying some matte black paint. I also bought a pack of rollers, so when i got back me and Andrew cracked on and painted the back walls and gave it a second coat. Once finished i began to make room for the lighting and camera equipment, i also found a problem as there was light breaking trough the door. So i then chose to get a dark towel and block out the light so i could capture a better image.

Overall i thought this was a good idea and it worked out well with no problems with light bouncing back off the walls though obviously we did have trouble with shadows of sorts. This really helped with my film and gave me a lot of time to shoot as i did not have a required time to leave.

Me, Myself & I shooting day no.1

So on Thursday i decided that i needed to start to shoot for my film. Yet i did want to shoot on the Wednesday as that was the best day as you can see from my weather report. But due to all the equipment being booked out i had to make do. So i started the day by getting all my equipment before hand and setting off to mine. Once we got to mine the first shot that took place was the out door scenes shot in front of my house. Establishing shot, tracking dolly shot & a few close ups were involved in this section of filming. Ethan was my Camera Op and Andrew was my Sound Op for this one which fared very well as they worked hard to achieve what i was asking of them.

So i moved on from here into the garage where i decided to shoot my scenes that were suppose to show my emotions and thoughts in my head with the lighting and other sorts. This went very well but did take a good amount of time which lead to the battery dying in which we decided to charge it up and head to Tesco for a break whilst it charged.
On our way back i told them the plan of action of what i had left to shoot. I contacted my actors that i would be using and was informed that they would not be ready until 4:30, so i decided to get the shots in my house that would lead to the end of the film leaving only there shots left to capture.

It hit 4:30 and to my annoyance they were 30 minutes late heading to five O'clock which was rather infuriating as the area became much darker than before which would clash causing continuity errors. But i went ahead and tried to get the best of what i could capture out of there time but suddenly as we began to set up on location it began to pour down with rain leaving me with no option but to pack up and re-schedule for another day to capture my final scenes.

Weather report/ Shoot date

This is just to let my crew know about the weather as it will be on the day I have chosen to shoot the outdoor scenes for my film. As you can see I have picked a good day in which too film as it is really the only good day of the week. The shoot day is Wednesday the 25^th, though if all of my scenes I need are not shot in that time I will open Thursday as a possibility to get the further shots I need to finish my filming process and move onto my editing.

The shoot will start at 10am and have an open end, as I do not know when exactly I will have all of my shots finished. I will obviously take into account any one of the cast or crews needs as well as times that they may need to go. Though I did make sure to tell my cast and crew of the shoot date 2 weeks in advance so there should be no issues here.

If I do not capture all the shots I need for my film on these desired dates, I will make another date in which to shoot my final scenes though hopefully I will not run into any issues with the film itself. Just a note that the weather will not likely be very warm so if the cast and crew could bring their own insulating clothing like gloves, hats etc.. that would be appreciated.

Camera Op: Me Myself & I

Yesterday i was in charge of camera operation on Andrew Rogers Me Myself & I. It was a full day of shooting as we went from location to location to get the shots Andrew was after. The first shot of the day was the shot in VUE car park, Andrew wanted a tracking shot from behind the car of all three actors getting out of the car then panning towards an establishing shot of VUE. There was an issue with this shot however as the reflection of myself behind the camera was caught in the bodywork of the car. Andrew decided to lift the boot and sit the actors in the boot of the car to stray away from reflections being caught on camera. Another shot was recorded inside the car to piece together these scenes. We then had to take one of the friends who was acting home in which we moved onto shooting the few scenes that need to be shot at Andrews house including an establishing shot, pan shot leading to an upward tilt and some static mid and close up shots in the kitchen. We ran into no issues throughout the day except from lighting issues as some of the shots were over exposed. We did however fix this issue as we noticed the ND filter was the issue causing the brightness.

We had two further shots to capture which lead to us going back upto hartlepool to meet our actors and film inside KFC for one of the final shots. We had no issues inside of KFC and were in and out of there with time to spare for a further few shots, though the final shots Andrew needed were inside the Uni which was closed at this time so we called it a day and are saving another day for the final shots at CCAD.

Sound Op: Me Myself & I

Last week myself, Andrew Rogers & Ethan Turley made a start on filming for Ethan's Me Myself & I. Andrew was on camera and i was on sound, once we had got to the location and set up it became apparent that there was going to be some minor difficulties with the location itself. We realised that with the hallway scene Ethan was wanting to be filmed, not all of the doors would be accessible. Some of the doors were locked due to work being assessed, so instead we had to go to the opposite hallway in which we did encounter another issue, the opposite hallway was filled with a great amount of machinery noise. We closed the doors we could to drown out the noise but there still was some still being caught on the mic. We came to the agreement that we would use the sound from the other door and use that for the doors that were being difficult for a clear recording. There wasn't a lot for me as a Sound Op to do though we did get a good amount of Ethan's project filmed on that day and in good time.

StoryBoards

Smoke Machine & Cool Lights

In today's lesson we learnt the proper use of the smoke machine, first off protection and hazard awareness. The smoke machine may not reach such high temperatures as the redheads and blondes but it still has the capability of burning the skin. To stop this there is a plastic handle that you can grab to move the machine when it is switched on. You will need some form of socket to switch the machine on but once it has heated up you can unplug it and move it around whilst still spewing smoke at the same time. Another thing to note would be once used the smoke machine will still cough smoke up to an hour after it has been switched off so make sure you have a well ventilated spot to keep it. The use of a smoke machine can cause a number of different effects and there is also a toggle on top which allows you to change the density of the smoke. 

Other safety precautions that should be taken into effect when using the smoke machine is having the smoke detectors capped, but you also need to remember to take them off once you have finished using the smoke machine other wise the fire department will not have the notice of a fire in the building. When using the smoke machine you also need to take into account any asthmatics in the room, outside use of the machine is not great if the wind is high but can be used still. 

We then moved onto the cool lights which can be used as fog lights to brighten the backgrounds, because the cool lights use less power you can power more of them then you could with the redheads which is helpful when trying to brighten up larger areas. The cool lights have a dial which can be turned to brighten and darken the volume of light.