First Day at Filming

On Sunday we started filming our Media. We got to my house and got the camera, props etc ready and got to our location of filming. As soon as we arrived there we noticed few problems to start with. The floor was very wet and muddy from the snow melting and we were struggling to walk on the paths. We walked backwards through where we are filming from finish to start to check that all of it will be ok to film in. The lake was still quite icy so we decided to have ago at filming just to see what happens. We arrived at the location quite late so we were panicking about it getting too dark very quickly and not being able to film much footage. Most of the paths were quite clear and we made the most out of filming on them. We reached the start of where we are filming and set the camera up and where we would of wanted to position the camera the sun was beaming onto it. We decided we could use the sun as a special effect, when they were running they were disappearing into the sun. We had to decide how fast they were going to run and how much distance they would have between them. Our first shot was next to a road so we had to be careful when filming this. We managed to get some shots of our first section of filming, with people passing by thinking we were weird. We practiced with the camera at different angles and types of shots and how we wanted to film it. We then realised that this was going to be much harder than we had first thought. We wanted to have some shots of me holding the camera running just behind them running to make it shaky and handheld, but we then found that it was too shaky and you could hardly see in a straight line of what was happening. After more struggling running through the mud and it getting darker by the second we wanted to get as much footage as we could, We had ago at filming one of the shots with the props,we chose to film the part were Simon throws his bag in a bush so he can run faster but Lewis picks it up to find out more information, we had to do 3 takes of this as Simon kept throwing the bag in places the audience could not see. At this point of filming we weren't even worrying about sound at the moment, we were just trying to film as much as possible and practice. We then reached the lake scene we had an establishing shot of the lake and Simon and then Lewis running past the camera. This was our most effective and more professional looking shot we had done. We then reached the muddiest part of our filming location. The boys had to chase each other down a muddy path that was going downhill and led to the lake. We had a few practices at this and then filmed. It was very hard for them to not fall over and try and keep it more realistic. After Simon had fallen over in the mud and it would of made the film look weird that one minute he didn't have mud on him and the next he did, we decided to call it a day and see what footage we had. We had nearly 2 minutes of footage (Mostly rubbish). After watching the footage we had, we decided to take notes on what we could improve on our next go at filming,

• Use more different types of shots
• Be more creative with how we could make the shots look even better
• Think about continuity
• Be at the location earlier so we have more time to film with.

Most of our shots we had were very similar and quite repetitive. We also thought that they looked more like teenagers causing trouble than someone who could be a threat to the country. When we go back to the location next week we should be prepared for weather conditions, think about how the weather or things around where when we filmed the week earlier. We should also be prepared with more ideas to improve our shots and maybe bring someone to help carry the equipment so we can get things done quicker so we have more time to film instead of getting the tripod out then putting it back etc.