Thursday, 20 December 2012

Filming #5 *ADD PICTURES*


We've just filmed the 1940s scene, set in a bomb shelter. We filmed inside a crawl space inside a roof, replicating the cramped conditions of bomb shelters in WWII. We plan to use an external shot of a bomb shelter that I currently have in my back garden in order to set the scene, and then use what we shot today as the interior.

It was a fairly successful shoot: we had lots of fun and filming by candlelight gave a really nice ambient look to our footage. However, we did have to be extremely careful as we were filming inside a wooden roof and lighting and relighting candles many times. Luckily, the smoke alarm was all the way downstairs so we didn't set it off!

As always, we tried to replicate authentic costumes of the time. I wore my hair in plaits with a floral dress, knee high grey socks and a cream cardigan. We thought this was quite iconic of children at the time of the 1940s. To compliment this, we also had an authentic gas mask box and old teddy bear, although we aren't sure how well these have shown up on film.

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*Insert Date* - Update.

We have now successfully finished our 1940s scene! We filmed in my back garden outside - unfortunately, the timing was horrible as we had to film in the snow, and the dress I was wearing was not very warm at all. The shoot - luckily - was a quick one and I am proud of the footage I got.

For this scene I had to run in on the left side of the frame (as I had run out the right side of the previous shot) and go into the bomb shelter. After a couple of takes, we also decided to start experimenting with shaking the tripod to create the effect a bomb is hitting. I think this looked really good on camera, and we are looking forward to editing it. 

Tuesday, 18 December 2012

Filming #4




Today we filmed the 1920s scene. We went to Grace's grandmother's house because she had decor we felt was representative/we could dress up to be representative of the age. We used break time and one of our free periods to go down into New Malden and shoot, taking many many bags of clothes and equipment with us.

In general it went well, also I didn't feel like we got enough close ups nor that the scene was storyboarded to the right depth. However, looking back over the footage I think it looks suitably authentic and the shoot generally went well.

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COSTUME:For our 1920s scene we had put so much care into the costumes of the era. The four of us having previously studied 'The Great Gatsby', a novel set in this era, meant we were all knowledgeable about the fashion at the time and we had some great conversations about the best way to represent this. We wanted to dress up as high end 1920s women, as not only would this be a lot easier and more fun, but we could bring together the mise en scene for it much better aswell. I was also lucky in the fact that my family had kept an extremely old, handstitched velvet coat from the 1920s which belonged to my great-grandmother, which we also used in the scene.

MISE EN SCENE:
To properly connote that this was the 1920s, mise-en-scene was also imperative. Luckily, Ellen's grandparents owned a silver service from the era, which was the centerpiece of the table in our scene and really brought the whole shoot together.

During the 1920s the Prohibition was also in place: alcohol was illegal and only the higher classes with connections to gangsters could get alcholic drinks. We had dressed like the upper class, so it only made sense we followed this through, using the silver martini goblets and a cleverly placed Champagne box in the background to connote this.