The first problem we encountered was within the first scene where the three girls walk into the block of flats. This shot, which should not have taken along time, in fact took around 5-6 takes. This was because I needed to walk faster than the other girls so that we could have a smooth transaction into the next scene, on top of this forgetting our lines and bursting into laughter which was unprofessional.
When moving onto the next scene we had a problem with the camera work as the shot did not look as it was meant to. I was meant to Pan around the hooded man without revealing his face, however I tracked around him and instead of stopping on his face I moved past him. This went wrong because I used the wrong technique and now must be re-filmed as it does not look as mysterious as expected, therefore isn’t as interesting.
One of the major dilemmas which we faced was the lighting within the stairwell. The only lights placed there are set to a timer and only come on at night. Also there are no plug sockets to add any extra lighting unless attaching an extension lead from the flat, which could cause disruption to the other residents which we did not want to happen. This caused the shots in this location to be very dark and again we will need to re-film these parts, such as the girls walking up the stairs and the conversation with the old lady. Yet this time we will see if using night mode on the camera will brighten up the scenes, or by using a powerful touch high in a corner to make it look like a lightened room.
As we continued we had more difficulties with the camera work. One of the most obvious was the panning with the girls walking up the stairs. Although this was partly down to the space issues as there was not a lot of room to put the camera on the landing and then walk past it. This lead to cutting off the girls heads and not following there movements well as the lens would go out of focus if the camera or people moved to fast. What should have happened was the camera operator setting the camera higher, as well as allowing two of the girls to be out of shot, then following the third up the stairs. As we are going to re-film this section we will do it like this, whilst making as much space as possible to make it easier to move around.
Three mistakes which should have been avoided were firstly the re-watching the tape. We have been told never to do this, just to film a shot again if we didn’t think it was right. However at the time we did not think and watched a few shots back. This caused breaks in times which made it harder when blogging. The second was the height of the camera. In most of the shots it was to low and cuts the tops of people’s heads off. We now have to re- shoot these shots as they look silly and look very amateur. Lastly the actors did not know there script 100% so improvised certain sections. This was not good as it goes against what we have put in the pre-production section in our blogs, however will be learnt and said correctly with the scenes that are going to be re-filmed.
When editing one of the main problems we faced was issues with continuity as some of the scenes do not flow to well and do not match 100%, yet we managed to cover these with fade in black screens and titles. This is why there are many more titles than shown in the treatment and shot list as we needed to create more to overcome certain issues, yet having more seems to add to the effect of the overall sequence as the fade in and outs create more intensity. Also there is a section near the end when Laura walks up to the door frame and pauses and then the camera moves forward closely behind her. The effect we wanted to give was the impression that she wasn't sure weather to answer the door or not as she did not no what she may come across, however this in fact does not appear like this and seems like dodgy camera work which we now regret creating. Another was where Laura has her back to the camera, with the next shot being a close-up of her face where she has changed direction which looks strange and is incorrect. At the time we did not think about this as where more concerned about fitting different shots in. I realise how careful you must be as little things make a big difference.
The final cut is also over the required amount of time but we decided that we needed all the footage as it made a good introduction to the film and included an insight to the characters, past events and a feel for what the rest of the film is going to be about.
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