Filming Completed

Yesterday, keeping to the revised schedule, we completed filming for all scenes in both locations. Overall the filming went well and only took a few hours, however some problems did arise.

Problems
The main problem we faced was linked to the shooting of the exterior scenes in Bursted Woods. We had originally planned to arrive there in the early evening so it would be dark enough to create the right atmosphere but light enough to film deep in the woods, however the interior scenes had taken longer than expected so by the time we arrived it was approaching 9pm and, even with night vision turned on, too dark to see anything captured on camera apart from close ups. This happened with my AS project and the resolution we found was to film of the edge of the woods close to the road and shops which then gave a small amount of light and just enough to film the scenes. Unfortunately though, we could not do the same with this project as the camera needed to be quite the distance away from the characters to achieve a long shot. After some time of thinking and walking around the area we found the ideal solution - We used the road leading to the hospital. The road had street lamps spaciously place so this gave us just the right amount of light and, especially at this time of night, the road was hardly used by vehicles so this would give us enough time to film, privacy and lack of interruptions - or so we thought.

To film the scene I and another cast member hid by the side of the rode and slightly in the woods so we would be out of shot, the camera was placed in the road whilst the two characters involved in the scene were on the opposite side of the road. It seemed that every time we were almost finished with the scene a car came from the hospital so the actors had to quickly move from the road and the camera had to be retrieved so it was not damaged.

After this happened quite a few times it became frustrating so I told the actors to keep going with the scene for as long as they could until it was absolutely necessary that they had to move from the path of the car - this is when the biggest, but in the end the most helpful, problem arose. The scene was almost finished, the female character, Jennifer, is laying lifeless on the floor with the male character, Pelé,  in a white mask kneeling over her with his hands around her neck, at this moment a car came from the hospital but, as told, the actors remained in character until necessary. As the car came closer and slowed down Pelé ran out of its path into the wood but Jennifer had not yet noticed so was still in character lying lifeless on the floor as the car manoeuvred past her. After the car had gone we laughed about it and looked at the footage we had got to see if we could use any of it, everyone was with the camera on one side of the road except for Pelé who was on the other trying to fix his mask as it had snapped when he ran. At this moment another car drove up the road - a Police car. They stopped beside Pelé and immediately started asking him questions, another Police car also drove up, we all went over to see what was happening and when they saw the rest of us they looked surprised and said they had received a call about "A man in a mask attacking a girl", we came to the conclusion that the previous car must have celled them, after we had told them that we were actually filming a scene for my Media project they found it quite humorous and said the acting must have been convincing. After that, one of the Police cars stayed just long enough for us to finish filming the scene without any interruptions.