Filming Weekend

Filming a Short Part Two 
Another take on directing a short in two days.

Second time round, my immediate thought was that I wanted this film to be more successful than the last one. Before the weekend I ran through all the problems in which went wrong last time, and how I could avoid them this time round.

The weekend started at Madison and Oakley, which the owner kindly let us use for a few hours to film the office scene. We gave ourselves plenty of room to get as much filming in there as possible.  We got set up quickly, starting with going through the shot list. However, we didn't stick to it. I think this is a good thing as we were discovering better shots on the day when we were there. For example, I had the idea of filming the clock at various points. When edited, we can keep cutting back to the clock. This doesn't just show that time is changing, but also that it shows the characters boredom while he is at work as he keeps looking at it.

We also had the idea of filming close-up shots of various items in the office. Such things as the printer, the phone, the computer, plants, office papers. This was inspired by Ricky Gervias' The Office. It helps with the establishing of the setting and it makes the film more visually interesting and different to the ordinary establishing shot of the building.

We didn't run into any problems in the office. We then proceeded to film more that day, with the main character biking through Oldfield Park (his journey home). This went fairly well as we managed to get the shots as the sun was at its peak. We decided to have a long shot of the character biking up the road. It worked well as we were standing in the road and the cars parked went down in a triangular angle.

On the second day, the filming took place in my house. this was the most fun and exciting part of the weekend as were about to attempt the shot of the room turning upside down. We got off to a good start with all the shots. Similar to the clock, I had the idea of him putting in a pie in the microwave. We filmed the microwave counting down from two minutes. The idea is to keep intercutting to the time and as soon as it ends, the room will turn upside down.



It finally came to the last shot - inception. The shot was very interesting to film, and we had very interesting ideas on how to film it. We brought a white board which we placed on the floor, and attached my light shade from the kitchen on it - so basically we re-created the ceiling on the floor. We then shot the character holding a chocolate gateau (didn't have enough money for a tiramisu) and then swaying the camera almost like a pirate ship ride, however with the camera eventually going all the way round.

We then shot him falling on the board and then a shot of the cake falling on his face. This we create in slow motion giving it more of a dramatic effect. The last shot we decided to use the audio of the character, in which we will cut out the music. Here are some pictures from filming.

 

Overall the weekend was much more successful that last time. We didn't run into any problems which made the whole experience much more enjoyable. I am looking forward to seeing how it comes across in the editing process.