Charlie's AS Media Blog: January 2011

Monday, 24 January 2011

Final casting list: 24/1/11.

Annie Butler - playing Newsreader 1 on first attempt to film. Also policewoman on first attempt to film interview. Finally, played Holly Wells in first two shots on storyboard.

Emily Hertzell - playing Newsreader 2 on first attempt of filming. Finally, played Holly Wells in bathroom scene.

Charlie Russell (me) - playing Jessica Chapman.

Lewis Pritchard - played Ian Huntley in first attempt at filming police interview.

Archie Scott - played Ian Huntley in final attempt at filming police interview.

Pete Case - played Ian Huntley in bathroom scene.

Mike Maddocks - played police officer in final attempt at police interview.

Eddie Hobbs - played newsreader in final scene.

Sunday, 23 January 2011

Problems with filming had to overcome:

17/1/11

Our storyboard shows the second shot of the girls walking past houses as a high up shot, in the style of a CCTV camera. However, after attempting a few different ways of making this happen - including heightening the tripod to its maximum and attempting to film by putting the camera on a wall - we decided it was too dangerous and changed it to normal height long shots.

Snap shot of original filming of second shot of storyboard.

Also, we ended up filming this shot in a highstreet instead of showing the girls walking past houses, as this was an easier accessed location at the time.
We also attempted to achieve a dusk lighting when filming these scenes. However, it got dark too quickly so it's difficult to see what's happening in the scene. Instead, we've decided to re-film this scene during the day.

First attempt filming first shot of storyboard - dusk lighting got dark too quickly.

In the true story that our filming is based on, the two girls walk out of their house from a summer barbeque to go to a shop to buy some sweets. However, due to the deadlines of our filming being around February, we had to change the story so they girls are leaving a winter party or winter barbeque instead.
The newsreader scene was filmed with two people, rather than one because we thought this would make it look more professional. However, the background ended up having to be plain white as we couldnt find a way to incorporate any newsreader backgrounds onto our shot. Also, one of the actresses used was already used in the bathroom scene as we didn't think you'd be able to see her face due to our plan to edit the scene to make it fuzzy. However, we couldn't find a setting on the programme iMovie that could make the scene completely fuzzy, so it's evident that the same actress was used.

First attempt at newsreader shot.

The actress in the bathroom scene also smiles, which is evidently seen if we don't find a way of making the scene fuzzy.

Actress smiling in scene.

We changed the interview scene between Huntley and the police actor to extreme close up shots of their faces whilst exchanging dialogue instead of the original plan of a mid shot showing both actors whilst speaking. We decided to change this to give the shots of the film more variation, as our attempted CCTV shot didn't work we felt we needed more different types of shot in the film. However, the actress pretending to be a police officer in this shot was already filmed as a newreader. We have decided to re-film the newsreader scene with different actors/actresses, as both shown have already been in a different scene playing different characters. We also attempted to film this scene with no tripod, so the shots are at different angles.

First attempt at interview, close up shots not in sync with eachother without a tripod.

The lack of props was another problem for the two scenes. We couldn't find two red tops for any of the scenes so decided that this wasn't a necessity for the film to make sense. Also, the lack of a police hat or any type of uniform in the first attempt at the interview scene makes it undiscernible as to who is interviewing who. We decided due to the bad quality of the camerawork, the lack of props and the lack of actors that we will re-do the interview shot between the policeman and Huntley as well.
Due to the lack of actors time, as aforementioned, we ended up having to film the same person acting as both Holly and half of the newsreader team, as our original actress for Holly was unavailable when we needed to film. Our actress for Jessica was also unavailable at this time, so I ended up acting as Jessica. We also had this same issue with the role of Ian Huntley. We ended up having one actor with his hood up during the bathroom scene so you couldn't see his face, and another when filming the interview, neither being the original wanted actor for Huntley. The same problem occurred with the original policewoman, the original newsreader and the original woman walking through the forest who finds the little girl's bodies.

24/1/11.

We re-filmed the second shot of the girls walking past houses, as well as the first shot of them walking out of a house on the 18th January as the first attempt was too dark. Instead, we decided to forget about the usage of lighting for atmosphere - as two ten year old girls walking out at dusk in the winter is quite unlikely anyway - and filmed these scenes during the day instead. The first shot in our storyboard says that we would show match on action with the girls walking out of the house. However, as the look of the outside of the house we walked out of didn't fit with the look of the houses we walked past, we changed it so the second shot shows the match on action instead, and the first only shows the actresses leaving the house and closing the door behind them. We also had to use another different actress to play Holly as the one in the bathroom scene was unavailable at the time. However, this then caused another issue as you can clearly see the different actresses face in the bathroom scene as we couldn't find a way on iMovie to make the shot completely fuzzy. To overcome this, my partner and I will have to either find a way of fuzzing out the actresses face completely or re-film the bathroom shot.

Second attempt at filming first shot of storyboard - better lighting.

Second attempt at second shot of girls walking along. Attempted to achieve high camera angle by placing camera on a tripod up a hill - this is as high as was possible to achieve in our surroundings.

We re-filmed the interview scene with Huntley and the police actor on the 20th January with a tripod, to make the shots steady and continuous. We also attempted to make the scene more professional by aquiring a police jumper as a prop. We ended up filming this shot in front of houses to make it more realistic, rather than on a highstreet as our storyboard says.

Second attempt at interview - had to use a new actor due to the lasts lack of time
We also re-filmed the newsreader shot on the 21st January. We used our original Ian Huntley actor as the newsreader, and shot it outside our school, changing the script to mention that the reader is on site. We also shortened the newsreader script so our film doesn't exceed two minutes.

Second attempt at newsreader shot with new actor and location.

7/2/11.
To overcome the issue of not finding a way to make the bathroom scene fuzzy enough for it not to be obvious that two different actresses are used for the character of Holly, I decided to try out a different editing programme to iMovie.
The audio on the scene with the actress in the forest doesn't seem very realistic, as the actress didn't make any noise when she supposedly saw the two girls bodies in the forest. At first I tried making the scene silent to overcome this problem but this then posed the problem that the scene didn't seem to make sense, or it wasn't very obvious what was happening. Therefore, I decided to attempt to record my own audio and lay it over the shot, hopefully in sync with the movements.
I had to cut the interview between Huntley and the policeman down because some of it didn't seem to make sense when I put it on the editing timeline. Because of this, some of the speech seems a bit stiff and unnatural.
I also had to re film the scene of the newspapers falling on the table, as we filmed this scene at the beginning of the project with a different camera, and the format of film from that camera didn't match up with Windows Movie Maker when I moved all of my other clips onto it.

Schedule/plan for filming. 29/11/10.

To begin scheduling the filming, I decided to sort the shots out that we need to do in order of difficulty, with what I believe will be the most difficult first:

The bathroom scene I think will be most difficult as we need the most characters at once in this scene - Huntley actor and actresses for the two girls - also, the location is more difficult as it's harder finding time to film indoors to fit in with other residents than filming a highstreet for example. We also need the two red tops for this scene.
The shot with the police actor searching through bins and finding the burnt red tops will be the second most difficult, as it's tricky finding an area with open bins where you can film someone rooting through them. Also, having to burn the red tops will be dangerous.
The interview between Huntley and the police actor will need a script written for it, also we'll need to find a suitable place with houses in the background where we can safely film.
The newsreader shot will be fourth as again, we need to write a believable script, possibly create a background for the newreader to make it look more professional or simply organise the mise en scene to make the shot look believable to the audience.
Showing the girls walk out of the door will be fifth hardest as other than timing the filming around the other residents of the house, the shot will only take a few minutes to film.
The girls walking past houses should be easy enough, if we can find a way to film from a high area to achieve the style of a CCTV shot. The outside of the houses the girls walk past however, must fit in with the outside of the house we just saw them walk out of.
The forest scene will be the second least difficult to shoot, as there shouldn't be disturbances when filming in an open area such as a forest as there are no laws against it.
The least difficult to film I think will be filming the newspapers falling onto a table as other than making the props of newspapers with headlines related to the Holly and Jessica case themselves, the actual shot can be filmed anywhere, on any table which is convenient.

We have the deadline of the 10th January 2011 to finish our filming in preparation to begin editing the shots in our lessons after the christmas holidays. This gives us approximately six weeks for the filming. However, my partner and I are aiming to finish filming by the beginning of the holidays, so around the 17th December, giving us three weeks to complete filming. We would like to finish by this time as it's more than likely that shots will need to be re-done or altered, which we can do in the new year.

To organise our filming over the next three weeks, I created this table. To create this, I asked our original cast when they thought they'd be free for acting: