AY: Shoot Reflection 3

Where did you go and what did you achieve?

On Sunday 10th November, we went to Harry's house  in Pembury to film footage for the first verse of the song and then to Maidstone to film the filler shot of Dan moving forwards with the public walking backwards and the second verse. At Harry's house we used the track and dolly to create smooth tracking shots of Dan approaching the house which we assume to be his. We used a mixture of long and mid shots to capture some interesting visuals whilst ensuring the mise-en-scene was appropriate for the scene. In Maidstone we collected lots of short shots of Dan moving backwards through a crowd of people so that we could reverse it when we came to edit the footage. We also captured the 'seeing self' sequence which also required the track and dolly.

What problems did you encounter? 

During our shoot at Pembury we had to be careful not to get unwanted reflections from the windows that would ruin the shot which meant that we had to take a few takes for each shot. In Maidstone we had a number of difficulties shooting on Fremlin Walk. We were approached by an official who said that we had to get permission from all the stores that were going to be in our shot even if they weren't in focus. To overcome this we were able to find a small back street with arches and non-commercial shops and cafes. This meant we could film here without having to get permission from any shops. The only issue with this location was that it was very quiet and there were virtually no people walking down the street. We also had trouble with casual passers - by; the idea was for them to be in the shot as part of a crowd however they would often avoid or duck out of the shot when they saw that we were filming. Another small problem was keeping an eye on the daylight hours, we had to finish our filming before it got dark which limited our time frame.

What did we learn in regards to improvements on the next shoot?

In regards to our next shoot we have learnt to get permission from every store that will be in the shot, whether in focus or not. It might be an idea to pick somewhere less commercial where we wouldn't encounter this problem as much. We should also consider starting shooting earlier so that we can get more daylight hours for filming.