Filming

On the day of filming we made sure we arrived early so we had plenty of time for filming in the daylight, especially as we are entering the winter seasons so the days are shorter. We had made a list of equipment that we needed, some involved being signed out of the CLR, to bring down. 

Once arrived at the location we set up all the equipment and took some test shots of the scene, I brought my laptop so that we could view the image on a bigger screen to make sure the picture was all right and working before we filmed the whole scene. 

Everyone had been set there jobs and it was perfect that we had six people in our group because it allowed all the actors to focus on their jobs and then we could have one person per camera and a set person for the sound.

Me, Louis and Eliz were acting in the video. Ryan was the main tracking camera, using my Canon 60D and a steadi-cam. Imogen was on the the second camera (Ryan's Canon 550D) while being attached to a Video Heavy duty tri-pod. Miranda had a Seinheizer 416 mic attached on boom into a Zoom recorder which we then were going to use to replace all the sound recorded on the camera. Me and Ryan mainly directed the shots and overall video. 

We already had a story board drawn out between us and had previously been to the location the day before so everyone had a more than rough idea of the what was being shot and where. We started to shoot in chronological order so it would be easy in finding clips and videos when in post production. The name of the soundtrack was announced on camera when filming to allow us to easily synchronise these later. 

The majority of the video was filmed on my Canon 60D with the steadi-cam. This was because we wanted the majority of the shots to be moving, to try and add to the dynamic attitude of the video. With the purposely shaking footage it made the scene look a lot more intense and realistic than when comparing to the footage of the stand still camera. This exaggerated the speed of the chase as well. Despite it being a steadicam we were quite rough with the piece so that it still gave a significant amount of shake to the footage. A steady glide to the image would have not help establish the energetic and frantic atmosphere we were looking for in the chase scene. 

We also used my Go pro hero 3 Black edition attached to my ski helmet to give a stable first person point of view camera. I used this to get some shots of me spray painted on the wall to running down one of the pathways.  We still made sure we linked the audio from the main microphone to the go pro footage because the sound was not at all good enough in comparison. Especially from what we learned during the sound design week that sound has a huge role on the effect on the overall feeling and atmosphere of the piece. 













Our main problem that we occurred during the day was the lack of light in the actual warehouses. With no access to electricity or no generator we were't able to provide any extra lighting. This meant we would have to try and make the most of daylight hours and shoot as much into the light as possible to reduce the grain. We did have reflectors with us which we were planning on using for stand still still shots however nearly all of the footage included some sort of movement which basically rendered the reflectors useless. 

I also had my on top spot light which i use for portrait photography however this created a very small artificial light which only was shown on where the camera was pointing. This made it very noticeable to the viewers and wasn't suitable for the actual video. 

We did try to place it on the floor in places but the light wasn't powerful enough to make a significant distance when placed in an area far enough away that it wouldn't be picked up on camera. This meant we had to stick with the warehouses where a lot of light was available for use. 


Overall I think filming went very well. If I was going to change anything about the shoot I'd probably look into possibilities on getting hands on a generator to be able to possible work some flash lights. 

I also would maybe think of filming over two days because as the day began to stretch on people were getting stressed on whether we were going to be able to finish filming before it actually got dark. I didn't want to have to rush filming and miss something however we didn't have the time in terms of our deadline to be able to come back a second day and film again.