Production Report

Day 1:
On our first day of filming, we tried to film as many shots as possible that were similar to each other. These included all shots from scenes 2, 5, 12, 3 and 6 - Only using two of our locations: The upstairs and downstairs hallways. All of these scenes were evening scenes, and unfortunately we still had natural light. This meant that we had to black out windows with black card and black bin liners to achieve the level of light that we wanted for night time scenes. We also had to set up Leon's bedroom, getting ready all the props and making it appear like a messy teenage boys room.

Out of all these scenes, there is only one line of dialogue, which made the filming process run smoothly as the actors had less to remember. The filming of these scenes was finished within a few hours, including the filming of extra takes as precaution. I feel that it went as smoothly as it did, due to the excitement of finally starting to put our planning into a finished product leaving us working well together with no major disagreements.

Day 2:
Day 2 we managed to film 3 scenes, including 9, 10 an 11. When drawing up our shooting schedule, I felt that filming these scenes together is a necessity due to the time of day we needed to film. Due to having no curtains or blinds in my kitchen, it was vital that we filmed when it was dark. We all met at our location at around 5.30, setting up everything needed until it finally got dark. This included creating Leon's 'beaten up' make up, getting our actors into costume, and helping them get the desired emotion out of their lines.

Once it got dark enough to film realistically, we started with scene 9, which is Leon coming through the door. This scene had to be re-shot numerous times due to Josh having trouble unlocking the door. Next we moved onto scene 11, which was still in the hallway, with Lily listening to the second half of the argument from the bottom of the stairs. By doing this scene first, Danielle and Josh were both able to read through the scripts helping them memorise more so, and get deeper into their characters.

The final scene of the evening was scene 9. This took a large amount of time, and a great deal of effort on all our parts due to a number of problems. These included the lack of sound, interference levels and the number of takes we had to do for each shot due to lines being forgotten. The shot-reverse-shot shots in this scene had to be filmed by me as I was one of the smallest in our crew, leading to me being the only one able to fit on the counter to film. To make sure I was not seen in the window whilst filming, we moved the plant pot along to disguise my reflection.

This may have been our longest evening of filming, with the whole team tiring. However, once we got these scenes out of the way, we felt more of a drive to get on with the rest of the filming.

Day 3:
Due to this being a Friday, we had the camera from 11am and were able to film any day scenes needing naturalistic bright lighting. These included scenes 14, 15, 16 and 17. Again these scenes are linear to each other because of the need of a specific time of day.

Luckily all of our actors were also available to film during the day. Our only organisational issue that we really faced on this day was the fact that we forgot to bring the base plate for the camera, and had to go back to school to get it. Whilst Danah went back to school to get the base plate, the rest of us set up each of the rooms needed on scene including tidying Leon's bedroom (putting his tracksuit bottoms neatly folded on the end of the bed), moving about the living room (putting sofas in the correct places and having minimalistic props on the coffee table).

When we finally got onto filming, we had issues concerning that quality of acting. I felt that this was that case due to never having to be a mother losing a son or a policeman in real life that they were unable to get into character. We also had problems with the sound. This was down to two factors: One was with filming outside there was uncontrollable noises such as cars driving past and the wind. The other was inside variables such as the washing machine making noises whilst we were trying to film. These could however be used as advantages, adding in to the realism of our film.

Day 4:
Again, due to needing dark lighting, we had to wait for another evening to film, taking into consideration that none of us would have been able to reach to black out all the Velux windows in the living room safely. For filming on this day we only needed to film in one room, with one actor (Steph). As Steph has nothing to say throughout the film, we were able to film all of the necessary shots with ease. The scenes shot were 4, 7 and 13.

The filming also ran with ease as we prepared for this day of filming the Sunday previous, where I taped the Hollyoaks Omnibus, which we planned to having running through in the background. This made things easier when it came to continuity, and we made sure that whenever we had stopped filming, that the recording of Hollyoaks was also stopped. We also prepared the Hangman drawing previous to filming.

When setting up the lighting for this day of filming, we made sure that any added lights had an orange filter to add to the warm effect around Lily. This was opposite to Leon, where we used a cold blue gel.

Day 5:
This was our final day of filming, consisting of only filming our final scene - Scene 8. As this was filmed at a different location, it had potential to be a problem, as people may have struggle to get there, however this was not the case.

Only the lamp already in the bedroom was needed to create a realistic night-time setting. This meant that no large lengths of time needed to be spend setting up lighting. However the main focus of the days filming was the sound of the argument happening outside of the bedroom. We ran through the script numerous times to make sure we had the correct levels from being in the bedroom. Due to our actors also not having to learn the scene's dialogue off-by-heart, made our day of filming significantly shorter.

One thing I felt went well this day was how aggressive the argument between Leon and the gang member really sounded. When going over the script with them, they felt it necessary that they added their own personality into their characters, leading to them improvising around the script slightly, which resulted in a greater success. Filming ended on a high note and we were keen to get onto editing what we had shot as soon as possible.