Post 16: Production Report

 

Wednesday 7th March
On our first day of filming we filmed scene 6 which is the classroom scene of when Billy is late. We show the teacher already doing the register as Billy walks in half way through. We show Billy walking through the door and his uniform is is slightly scruffy trying to show that he was late and did not have time to present himself as he should be. When Billy walks through the door Billy has a big school bag on his shoulder and is holding a folder. When he walks into the classroom the teacher tells him off and he then walks to his seat. When filming this scene we filmed it over the shoulder of the teacher and this went well. We had some issues of the teacher talking when the door was being shut but we did the shot again so we could hear everything which she was saying. The next shot we did was from a different position and showing the teacher sitting at her desk when Billy comes in. This shot has some issues with the lighting from the window behind her. We was lucky as the class that we filmed were very well behaved and this made it a lot easier for us to film as we could get it done quicker.

Wednesday 7th March
We decided to film after school for this scene as we needed it to be quiet around the area of filming and we decided that this was the est time to film. We filmed the scenes when Billy is sitting under the stairs this I in scene 1, 5 and 8. As I had the role of the director I had to make sure that the actor knew what he was doing and what dialogue he had and when he had to say it. We has to make decisions together to how we wanted his uniform to look and what we wanted him to do when he was sitting down. We had some issues with lighting from the windows on the door. We did not want these scenes to have bright lighting as we wanted to show that Billy felt alone and sad and we thought that dull lighting would help us achieve this. Due to the lighting we had to wait until the sun went in to get the lighting we wanted. Also we had some noise from classrooms and doors around the area due to students staying behind after school. Overall, we successfully filmed the scenes that we wanted to all in one session and we was happy with the way that it went.

Friday 9th March
We was lucky to get permission to take the actor we are using out of one of his lessons. We took this time to film him walking out of his house and down the alleyway and walking to school scene. When we down down to this location we did not consider the times of the primary school and the time that we went down there was the primary school lunch time. We decided that we could work around the background noise when editing. We also had some issues of lighting as the day we filmed it was very cloudy and this made our shot very bright and this is not what we wanted. When filming it went very well and we was happy with the way it turned out.

Monday 12th March

We filmed this scene in the morning and this is the scene of Billy's mum talking on the phone to the teacher when she is getting into her car. We filmed in the car park at the back of the school as we wanted to show that she was Busy at work and did not want it to look like a school. We used on of the teachers from school and her car for this scene. We also had issues with the lighting with this scene as it was also very cloudy and the sky was very bright but we changed the settings on the camera and this made a big difference and helped us. We had 4 different shots within this scene and it took a lot of preparation for each one to make sure that it was right and why we wanted. One of the shots two members of our group had to sit in the back of the car and film from behind, the back of the car was very small so this was a bit difficult to make sure it went right.

Monday 12th March
We had to film again after schools we needed to make sure that there was no students walking around as we needed the corridors to be clear for us to film. This scene was Billy running up the stair and along the corridor. We had to use a dolly for this part of filming as we needed to track Billy running. This piece of equipment helped us very much as we were able to get the shot to be very smooth and this is what we were trying to achieve. We was very happy with the way this session went as we got if done quite quickly.
This is a video of when we was filming the tracking shot of Billy running down the corridor...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0kTMcXB7j0&feature=relmfu

Tuesday 20th March
We had to film after school hours for this part of filming because we could not risk students being around because this may cause an accident. We filmed the scene when Billy running across the school field to the hedge and to get the tracking shot for this scene we had to use a car and film from out of the car of Billy running behind it. This was harder than we thought it would be because we found it difficult to place the camera in a position where it would not move and we would get a good shot of Billy running across the field. We had to film this part a couple of times as we wanted to make sure that it looked good. This part was inspired by a French New Wave film that we watched in class which was called 400 Blows. At the end of this film it shows a boy running along a road and finally reaching a beach and when he gets to the sea he has no where else to run and this is what we are trying to show in our short film that when the boy reaches the hedge on the field he doesn't know what else to do because he has no where else to run. At the end of this part we have got the character Billy to walk from the hedge and walk towards the camera and on this part of the short film we are going to have a freeze frame ending and this is also inspired by the film which we watched in class. We want to try and capture the emotions and feelings that he has and how lonely he is and we think that this will be a very effective ending.

The other scene which we filmed was the scene when Billy and the teacher are talking in the quad and when Billy runs away from the teacher. For this scene we filmed from different angles. Firstly, we show Billy from a high angle shot which we filmed in the three storey block and this was effective as we was able to show more than just Billy in the shot and not just focus on him as we wanted to show the location and also the teacher in the shot with him. We had to film a long shot of Billy running across the school grounds and we had to be careful where we placed the camera as it was very sunny and we had to consider the angle of the camera and think about whether the sun would effect the shot. With this filming session the main concern was the weather and the sun was out and this caused us problems with where to place the camera and how the sun would effect our shot but we worked as a group about different places where we could film from and we worked it out and this was no longer a problem.


Wednesday 21st March
On this day we had to re-film a part which we had originally filmed but we was not happy with what it turned out like because the shot was very bright due to the weather and we did not feel that this would work in our short film. It is the scene when Billy walks out of his house and talks to him mum on the phone and walks up to school. We was happy with the way this went second time round as we was also more prepared for what shots we wanted to use. We also found that this day of filming would work well as it was sunny like the day that we had filmed before so we felt that the continuity would be better the second time round and overall, we are very pleased with the way that it turned out.