Unit 30: Filming Process

The filming process!

Saturday 12th December

I travelled to the location of the shoot - my gran's house in Bishop Auckland and started filming at 11:30. I started with the start of the sequence showing the Old Lady in a signal bedroom, emphasising her loneliness, this was reasonably easy to film - there was lots of natural light but there was little space for me to use to place the camera and tripod. The next scene took place in the kitchen, I moved some items out of shot, I found a problem in this after I looked at the footage, the window that shows a lovely natural snowfall also shows the reflection of me filming with the camera - I will see if I can use some of the footage after I have put my desired effect on, if not I will have to reshoot the scenes. The last scene is the happy scene where the Old Lady enjoys her cup of tea and the little girl uses magic to make the tree lights come on and the Old Lady is happy. The snow, although looks pretty, caused some problems - there will inconsistencies and continuity errors as the advert is supposed to be on one day and through some windows there'll be snow and at other times there wont be.

Sunday 13th December

I learnt lots today, I filmed in my living room which needed to have the furniture moved, but what I learnt most is that I certainly don't like filming/working with kids. I like children, I'm good with children but when your filming and need to ask them to do the same thing 4 times in a row or stay still, it gets frustrating to them and you as a director. Another annoying thing was that I was working with my cousins who are certainly not actors, which posed a problem when I asked them for certain facial expressions. The time limits for children didn't generate a problem as I filmed the main scene first, with the younger actor being given a break when she wasn't needed, and then all of us receiving a break during lunchtime for Sunday Lunch. After lunch, we filmed the outdoor scenes - this was not fun as it was 3 degrees and the girls were bored and sick of filming, we needed to do prep for the outside lights which added on time to us being outdoors.

The main changes I had to make for this productions was swapping the roles for the children, although I wanted a younger child for the main character my younger cousin didn't always follow instructions and got bored and distracted quickly so I used the elder of the two. Also, I had problems with getting a fairy wand, originally I was going to borrow one but that didn't happen so on Saturday morning I went shopping for one on the way to filming but was not lucky enough to find one, I ended up having to use a 'pointer stick' instead of a fairy wand. This will not give the desired effect I wished for but it was solution to a very imposing problem.