Shoot Day - 20.01.09

Introduction
On the shoot day, I was actually very ill and it was looking very likely that I would not make it at all. However, I slept in all morning to get my strength up in the hope of going along to the shoot in the afternoon. Eventually, the nurse allowed me to go as she understood how much it meant to be.

My role in this production process was the Producer, so it was necessary that everything was prepared and organized for this shooting day. We already had our storyboard – we used this pretty much exactly. However, not knowing beforehand exactly the shots we wanted to use, when we filmed each frame we often decided to take a number of shots as we were not sure what would be best suited when editing. This therefore allowed us to experiment with different shots. Also, with being the producer I had to make sure that we had to have everything there ready to shoot, obviously not being at the shoot in the morning I was worried my group would not film everything we planned for etc. However, I worked very closely with the Director, Millie Corser throughout and I trusted her with my role for the mornings shoot. Also, being in this role I had to ensure our locations were secured before the day of our shoot and once there ensure that we used these locations to our films best interest – making sure we had sufficient footage.

Holmbury St Mary Church
During the morning of the shoot between nine o’clock to eleven o’clock, my group went to Holmbury St Mary Church - a small church nearby to the school without me - but had the knowledge and all the work of exactly we wanted to shoot. When they arrived, they set up ready to shoot. At first they were shooting our actress Sophie Wilson, she was the young girl in our thriller who's soul was being sold to the devil. So we decided that we would have her looking extremely innocent and angelic. They filmed Sophie saying the lords prayer from all different angles so we had a variety of shots to choose from - shooting her from close up shots of just of her eyes or mouth to long shots getting the whole mise en scene of the church in the frame as well. Also, whilst at the church they filmed all the religious iconography, such as the different crucifixes, the stain-glass windows, the alter, organs and other religious symbols.

Ewhusrt Place - Exterior
Once my group believed they had all the relevant shots of the church they moved locations to Ewhurst Place. I met my group here to continue with the shoot. When we first arrived at Ewhurst Place we went out to the garden, to the swing to take our next set of shots. Here we started by filming Sophie on the swing, during these shots I filmed many of them with the help of our Director of Photography, Matt Mcivor. Our groups Director, Millie Corser was there telling me exactly what to shoot – for this small part we swapped roles as I had missed the morning she helped by allowing to get myself wholeheartedly into the shoot in the afternoon. I filmed Sophie on the swing – using close up shots and mid shots. Whilst I was filming Millie was holding the microphone above as we wanted the sound of the swing as it was very effective. Once we had a number of shots of Sophie on the swing I went to shooting an empty swing. As the producer, it was my role to make decisions about the shoot – I came up with the idea of a perpendicular shot – the camera being placed directly underneath the swing, as this would look effective as it had the large branched tree above with the grey sky slightly shining through. When we believed we had all these shots out of the way – Mille and I swapped roles again and I went to hold to microphone whilst Millie filmed Alex Wilsure, one of our male actors – Sophie’s guardian on the phone. As a group, we decided on all the different shots we wanted taking different and extra shots so we would have a wide variety to choose from when editing.

Ewhurst Place – Interior
We then began filming downstairs in the basement in the house, our main focus was the cracks in the ceiling and the light shining through to the blackness of the basement – to emphasize the light we used intensifying lights to enhance the brightness and make the shots more effective. Here we filmed Sophie walking into the basement and stopping underneath the cracks in the ceiling, here I held the microphone up to the ceiling to ensure we caught the sound of George’s footsteps over the cracks. Also throughout this process George was finding it very difficult to get the timing right and covering the cracks in the ceiling perfectly – to ensure the shine from the lights disappeared when George or the ‘devil’ walked over them – so I was continually helping him and explaining exactly what to do, making certain that I lived up to my role of the producer. Throughout our time shooting in the basement and down the stairs into the basement in Ewhurst, I filmed a few of the shots but I mainly instructed everyone – ensuring that we got all the footage needed and more to show we had a variety of shot types.

Lighting
During our shooting day, we mainly used just the natural light – when filming both the interiors of Ewhurst Place and Holmbury St Mary Church we felt it would be more effective to keep the mise en scene more natural to make it seem more realistic. This went alongside just keeping the natural grey sky when filming the exterior of Ewhurst Place, when Sophie was on the swing. Although we just used natural light – I felt our exterior shots were not as good as they did not look as sharp etc. as our interior shots but after consideration we continued with them as we felt that the variation would work. However, when we were filming the footage in the basement it was vital that we used intensifying lights – these shots needed this to create the effect we were aiming for, Sophie walking into the light underneath the cracks in the ceiling and then George/the Devil walking over the cracks covering the light shining onto her face. When these shots worked they were extremely effective.

Mise en Scene
I felt all our shot compositions worked well, we experimented with different shot types but our three main locations worked alongside each other and told a story. We followed our script and storyboard quite closely only changing parts slightly – so we could include slightly different shots, in order for us to have a variation of shots.

I thought as our whole, our shoot day was very successful. There were no discrepancies between our group and we all spoke about ideas of different shot types and experimented with them all – as a group I believed we worked quite effectively with each other.