Rushes

Carla and I have completed our filming apart from one shot and are now at the editing stage. The filming went ok- we had a few problems, mainly with lighting. If I was to do the shoots again I would involve more preparation. Like visiting the location and taking a few snaps to get a better idea of whats involved- maybe doing a few test shots at the location, at the correct time of day and in costume just to check the shot worked and to experiment with different lighting effects.




We did one shot at carlas place, and used her bedroom to be the set of the grandmothers house. We had huge lamps to light the room but they were too bright and we wanted it quite dark and shadowy- instead we got all of the candles that carla owns and lit them to form shadows on the bed. We decided to use a trick carla had seen used by david lynch were we would film ourselves doing a scene backwards then reverse it in post-production so that we looked abit strange, we also did quite alot of stop-frame animation, which took hours but the end result worked really well- very juddermanesc!

The second shoot was set in the woods, Carla knew of some woods near her place so we collected all our equipment and costumes to set off. We intended to use the lamps again to light the shoot but were short of a generator, I mustered all of the torches I could find and took about 4 in of which only two would work!!!! Disaster! We set the iris on the camera to the lowest value (F1.6), the shutter speed to as long as we could get away with and the gain to the highest possible setting, anything to let more light in! none the less it was really too dark- the woods were pitch black and the torches formed rings where they shone. In addition our CD player decided to give out in the freezing cold so we had to quess the timings when dancing and mouthing the lyrics. Better preparation should have been done really in the case of the lights and a back up for the CD player should have been brought along. Lesson for next time. The rushes weren't so bad considering and they looked suitably silly as intended.



There is one shot left, which carla is intending to shoot at sunset in the woods so there is enough light to see the landscape (hopefully when there is a full moon! 24th dec), (will form the initial shot which establishes where the film/video is set).

Tomorrow we are going to have a go at editing- we have to choose which takes are the best and where suitable places to cut are. Once the film is edited we still need master the audio and we will perhaps experiment with a performance element to the project (if there is time) in order to do in Jonathons performance with technology elective.