A Diary Of A Days Filming

We started off our day in Brentwood High Street. We all met there at 09:00 and then immediately moved onto our first location; an industrial estate just behind a petrol station.  When we walked onto our first location we checked for any hazards and they were in abundance, so we tried to lower the risk of getting hurt by the glass and industrial traffic by warning every member of the group and then clearing away the majority of the glass that we would be walking on. After we cleared some of the hazards we got the camera set up on a tripod and scouted out where we were going to run and how we would frame the shots to get the best effect possible.  On our first take of the first scene it ran smoothly but we decided to try it again to see if our second attempt would look better than our first.  On the second take I ran again and turned sharply onto the pavement and ended up slipping in the middle of the road inches away from a moving car. This shook me up so we had a five minute break while I calmed down and another member of our group (Josh Thomas) went back up to town to get some anti-septic wipes for the minor injury sustained in my left leg.  After the incident was resolved we went to film our second shot which consisted of my character jumping over a concrete block and running away. This gave the impression of a high tension chase scene.  Our next scene was of me running down a straight road, we obviously couldn't do this without it getting boring so we had to do some intense tracking shots and a close up of my face as I was running. This also added to the atmosphere.  These shots served the purpouse of filling the gaps and keeping up the tention in between important events. Once we had lots of footage ready for editing, we decided to go and speak to the local Police force as we were attempting to film in a public area using a fake knife. After speaking to the Police Sargent he told us that we could film as long as there was no public in the vicinity which could become distressed.  Once we had talked to the police we realised that we had run out of time in wich to film, so we went to finish our last few shots and made arangements to continue shooting another day.  After this we went back to our original location and found a shot which we could make look like CCTV so we set up the camera and filmed and then later edited with black and white blur and harelines in the footage to give the impression of CCTV. The last scene we had was difficult as we had to film in the woods. This was awkward because we had to make sure we did not trip over branches which provided health and safety hazards That we had not foreseen.  We come up with the idea of doing point of view shots which was difficult as i had to stay still until Bart got to me and stood in my place.  The last shot of thriller proved tricky because someone had to jump out from behind a bush, grab my back and pull me into the undergrowth. This took several attempts as we had to find a place where the man wouldn't be seen. Also to make it life like the other actor (Ian Slade) had to yank me back hard.  This took several attempts to make it look believable, whilst avoiding injury. After all this we went back to school and imidiatly edited it.

By Scott Cawkwell