AY: Brighton Reflection

Where did you go and what were your aims?

We went to the coastal city of Brighton with the aim of practising location wreckies and a range of shot types that we could later use for our final piece. We were given a list of shot types that we had to capture including two inside and two outside and we already had our own ideas of what we wanted to film and how it should look for example we practising shooting a MS pan of a single person walking backwards through a crowd of people walking forwards so that we could then reverse the footage when editting it together. An example of this can be seen on the right. In addition to this the trip allowed us to look for other possible locations that we could come back and film for our proper shoot, for example shots of graffiti.


What did you achieve?

We managed to collect all of the footage set by our teachers and extra practise shots that we had considered using in the final piece. The day was also especially useful as it gave us the chance to film in crowded locations and presented us with the opportunity to work out innovative ways to incorporate them in our footaage. Aswell as this it allowed us to practise using Harry's new camera as none of us had ever used it before and we could add in effects such as colour alterations before filming. Finally, we had the opportunity to wander round some of the more quirky streets such as the lanes where there were some very interesting people and locations that we could use for practise shots.


What Problems did you encounter?

Throughout the whole day we didn't have any major setbacks. The only major issue we had was the strong wind that didn't die down for the whole day. This forced us to find shots that were further back from the shore so that we could capture steady tracking shots. Having said this, we were able to film inside the arcade on the pier which defeated the issue with wind and by the end of the trip the wind had died down enough for us to capture a few shots of the beach. Other than this we did not have any major problems. This surprised us especially when filming indoors as we were allowed to film in a cafe and a news agents without any difficulty from members of the public and shop staff.



What did you learn from the day which you can take to the next shoot?

I think that the most important thing we learnt was making sure we got enough footage for each shot for example if we wanted to use time stretch and speed up the clip we would need to collect at least 5 minutes of footage to make sure that there is enough. We also learnt that we would have to plan our shoots to be at appropriate times of day depending on how many people we need in the shot for example if we wanted a shot of a man walking through a crowd of people we would have make sure it would be on a busy enough day for the shot to look affective. Furthermore, we would have to choose an appropriate location where there would be big enough crowds that perhaps created a certain look for example it would be better to go to a big city such as London as there would be lots of people there and there is a vast range of different types of people from different cultural backgrounds.


Here is the video of our Brighton shots.