Filming Diary – Day One – Forest Scene

This PowerPoint will explain what happened, what problems we faced and how we overcame them on the

first day of filming at the forest.

In the morning of the 6th of March 2013, Rosie and Ellie preformed a walkthrough of the location that we will be filming in later in the day. As the weather hadn’t been too great in the previous days, there were a lot of puddles and slippery mud around. We realised that the location was very large so we had to decide as a pair where we were going to film so we didn’t waste time later. We also had to note down where we would be able to hang the rope. We added all of the hazards we came across to our risk assessment for that location. Only one of the group was absent from filming this day because of personal reasons.

When the rest of the group left school, we walked to Rosie’s house so our actor (Ginny) could get changed into her costume. After that we made our way to our location. We took the props and makeup with us and also the camera. When we arrived at the part of the location we first aimed to film at, we realised that it would be harder than we originally thought. We spent quite a while trying to get the rope hooked over the tree and making it look like a proper noose. After a while, some of the group went off to try and find another tree that may be easier to get the rope over. After we managed to get the rope over the tree, we had to work out where to stand when shooting, what will get in our way and if it would work or not. Whilst Rosie filmed the first scene with Ginny, Ellie and Amber went off and practiced the makeup on each other to see what looked best. Once the first few shots were filmed, Amber and Ellie applied the makeup to Ginny, allowing us to film the rest of the scene. When filming the rest of the scene, Amber and Ellie’s input really helped towards what shots to do and where to stand and what looks best.

We did encounter some problems on the day of filming such as forgetting to find certain props, what time we could do it so the lighting wouldn’t change in the middle of filming like it started to get dark. There were a lot of hazards that we didn’t recognise on our first walk through as well, meaning we had to clear them first before we could even start shooting. Obviously in a forest, there are a lot of trees, meaning we had to be really specific to where we placed the camera when shooting certain parts. We did take a few different shots from different angles to see what looked better plus we took shots from both sides of the hill. We specifically had to make sure that we didn’t get the noose in the shot until Ginny become possessed otherwise that would ruin the whole shot.

From filming the first scene, we were able to identify that it would be quicker and easier to plan out what shots to do and where the actor was going to be and what she was doing at a certain time. This would make it quicker to film and we wouldn’t have any problems as we knew what was happening and for the main part of it, we didn’t have to wait around we could just get on and film it. When it came to filming some different shots just in case, it turned out that we needed to use some of them because the continuity in the actual scene didn’t really match up. This really helped us identify what we needed to improve and change when it comes to filming the following scenes.