Filmed!

Yesterday evening, we gathered our equipment and prepared out notes for the most important day of the media course yet: the filming of our OTS.

After many takes, much discussion, and copious moments of ever-so-slight failure, I am glad to say that, overall, it went very, very well.

Because I had drawn the storyboards and written the flashback script, I blocked most of the scenes, explaining what we had in mind to our kind volunteers, whilst other members of the group set up equipment and discussed the movement of the camera. I also carried a list of the shots we needed, which I had derived from the storyboards. The actual filming was shared around the group, depending on who had the clearest ideas of the shot we wanted to achieve.

It was incredibly useful having four group members, because there were times when every member was needed for a specific purpose: a person to operate the camera, two people to relay signals to the volunteers (to control the timing of the scene), and a person to hold the notes along with any spare equipment.

We did experience some difficulty when filming in the city. Difficulty that came in the form of regular passers by. These ranged from a rowdy group of teenagers to an old lady out for a very, very, very relaxed strole with her inexplicably slow dog. We also had problems with cars, particularly on the small cobbled streets. These, however, were minor setbacks, and we simply waited until the coast was clear before beginning a shot. Towards the end of the night, we were alerting each other of such problems early-on, so that we didn't begin a shot only to have to re-take later.

The flashback sequence, which was filmed in an alleyway closer to home, also went very well. Unfortunately, it was raining, but we overcame the problem by holding a large umbrella over the camera, and incorporating an umbrella into the scene; held over the Femme Fatale by the Goon. We had several scripts on hand so that we were all able to supervise the volunteers with their lines, and James had a fully charged battery on hand when the first one eventually died. Whilst we were filming, Tom pointed out that the rain would actually add to the effect of the flashback; the rain would reinforce the idea that the flashback occured at a different time to the running sequence, adding to the realism of our narrative.

In summary, I am very happy with the way our evening of filming went, even if it did mean getting slightly wet, and scaring a cyclist who found us filming in an otherwise deserted, dark alleyway.