Production - Shoot Diary 19th November 2014

Call Sheet - 19.11.2014

Before the date of this shoot we had arranged for our actor, Kaitlyn Knight, to be picked up by Rebecca and driven to our school, where we would be filming. We chose to film scenes with only her on this first shoot as she plays a main character in our trailer and we wanted to familiarise ourselves with her, as only Rebecca had met her beforehand. All props, make up, costumes, and other equipment had been brought into school on the day so we could film. When our actor arrived, she got changed into her costume, and Hannah did her make up.

After Kaitlyn had been prepared we began shooting, using the call sheet above  which we had produced before the day of our shoot as a plan of what we would film, our script, shot list, and storyboards as guides. We started with simple scenes where our actor would not have to say anything, just walk, to ease her in, before scenes which required more difficult acting. 

The first shot proved a little problematic, as we were filming at the end of the school day, meaning some people were leaving and went past where we were shooting; this meant we could not get anything filmed for a short time. Also, this shot required me, operating the camera, to follow Kaitlyn as she walked up the stairs, tracking her feet. This meant I had to start off crouched down, and as she walked up the stairs I had to follow her movement, whilst also getting up from my crouched position, without making my camera movements too jerky. This required multiple takes as I became more used to doing this complicated movement with the camera, but we eventually achieved a shot which the group was happy with. 

In the third and fourth shots on the call sheet, our actor had to angrily bang the window in the third shot, and mirror in the the fourth, to show her frustration about being bullied. This required our director, Hannah, to explain to Kaitlyn what we needed her to do and get a good performance from her. After some different takes with altered camera position, and after Kaitlyn had really grasped what we wanted her to do, we got footage we were happy with for use in our trailer.

Overall, our first shoot went well and we are satisfied with the scenes we have filmed. However, some things could have been improved. The fake blood we were using had to be poured down a sink in one scene, and we did not like how the blood fell in drops and flowed in the basin, as we did not feel it looked realistic. We had not tested the blood beforehand, which, in hindsight, would have been a good idea, as we would have known how the blood acted and possibly put it into a different container for the shoot so it could be properly poured, rather than squeezed from a tube. As well as this, our shoot ran on for longer than we had planned, affecting how we will plan future shoots, probably including fewer scenes in one day and improving our efficiency in setting up our locations and actors.