Filming

As we'd organised the timetable for filming for half term, we were all set to start filming. It was Friday, and usefully, we have Media Studies period 5 (Last period of the day). As a result, we could take the lesson off and, starting at the beginning of lunch, film for a whole two hours and get a head start of collecting all the footage together.

Phoebe only lived about 5 minutes away from school so after buying lunch, I nipped over to Phoebe's house with Kirsty to film the shots of her and Theo (New Lover), as Theo was only free that day! As a result, there was a pressure to focus and stick to the schedule, which I think we did, even if there was a little goofing around.

Once we'd arrived (I was about 20 minutes late because I'd needed to eat lunch and the queues for food were ridiculously long), Phoebe and Kirsty were in the bedroom, while Theo sat outside listening to his music. They were deciding on an outfit for Phoebe to wear in the shots, and we chose a nice pyjama set for the scene with them in the bed and a casual-esque jeans top for the rest. When that was sorted, I hopped out of the window onto the conservatory roof, to film the shots of Phoebe singing out of the window with Theo lying in bed next to her, sleeping. 

Unfortunately, it didn't film as well as I'd hoped and involved me having to shakily film Theo's face then swerve up to Phoebe at an angle, as you couldn't see Theo just pointing the camera at the window. I captured a range of shots of Phoebe singing/looking out of the window and gleaned some landscape, nature shots from my position on the roof e.g. I followed a line of ivy that scaled up one side of the house to use a possible filler shot.

Phoebe's Dad had painted the roof of the conservatory and so it was still drying when I was up there. It was a bit of a hassle trying to manoeuvre around the wet areas and I had to take my shoes off when I entered back through the window but we got the necessary footage and Theo helped carrying my shoes in.

Halfway through filming, my camera ran out of memory and so Kirsty gave me a one of her memory cards. 

With the two cameras we had to work with, Kirsty and I took different jobs. Kirsty filmed the reflection shot of Phoebe singing into the mirror as Theo walked in while I filmed pan shots of the bedroom. Things then got awkward when I had to shoot the bed sequence. Phoebe and Theo got in, after a quick costume change, and we started to film. It took a while to calm the giggles but we got a nice selection of shots from some good angles, with both me and Kirsty operating the cameras. I shot from a bird's-eye view standing on the bed while Kirsty knelt by the side of the bed.

Journeying to the downstairs kitchen, we filmed the scene of Theo and Phoebe drinking tea and looking out of the window, again with dual cameras filming. The shot of them looking out of the window was a little trouble to co-ordinate as in the footage the viewer could see my reflection while filming, and so I had to film from an angle. It wasn't quite how I wanted it to turn out but we had to make-do with what we had. A great thing about Phoebe's kitchen is that it has huge floor-to-ceiling windows which let in the natural light, ideal for a clean, bright and natural shot.

Doing the filming today meant that we got a head start on filming and could leave the equipment there for filming the next day. We also set-up some of the scenes a little and created the outfits Phoebe planned to wear so that we could start filming straight away, efficiently as I had an engagement which only gave us until 2:00 on Saturday to get everything done.