Filming - 11th Dec 09

Tonight we finished our filming. We had to complete our series of murders in which we had to reschedule because some of the actors were unavailable. We had to film one scene again due to continuity as one of the actors forgot to bring an item of clothing. This scene was the shop scene where James Dillan purchases a packet of cigarettes. I'm glad we reshot this because the first time I wasn't present so didn't have much knowledge of what the shot would look like. I looked at the previous footage and analysed it to see if anything needed to be altered, and I believed it did. I thought that the dialogue should have been slightly different as when it as first filmed, when the actors ended the conversation, it wasn’t realistic because the discussion ended quickly and the tones of voice did not fit the scene. This was the only change that was made.

We then went onto shooting our fight scene. We knew this would be the hardest one to do and we had over 20 shots to do and we had to work outside in the cold. We got straight into setting up for the first shot, although we did change our location due to lighting complications. The first shot was where James Dillan is being followed and he drops the cigarette and notices Li behind, this is where the fight starts. For the group to remember the fighting and camera angles we printed each shot, which we put into a visual storyboard, so we could keep referring back to it. This helped a lot as we didn’t have to stop, think and possibly rein act some of the moves. Whilst filming we added some extra shots in that we believed were significant to out film. For example, in our visual storyboard you will notice it shows no images or signs of a close up of James dropping the cigarette and it hitting the floor, however we thought this would be effective on screen. One thing that occurred, not necessarily a problem, was that while we were directing and focusing on filming the cigarettes were burning out which meant if we were to be analysed deeply on continuity, it would show different lengths of the cigarette.

The next couple of shots went well and steady as they were easy to direct. The fight scene was filmed on a concrete surface which means we had to consider our risk assessment because we had a couple of falls and rolls in our film and wanted to avoid any injuries so took extra precaution when directing the actors during these parts. During the filming, because we took turns in taking the role of director and director of photography is caused the group to interfere as they had ideas which they thought would be more effective however it wasn’t up to them because it wasn’t their role.

I like how we vary our camera angles from long shots, mid shots, close medium shots, close ups and the camera from high angles, low angles and