Shoot day reflection

 Our shoot day was Thursday 13th May. We started off setting the studio up and laying out all the props. Matt helped setting up the lighting and putting florescent tubes up for coloured lighting. We then discussed how everything would work with changing the actors around and making it all look realistic. We then came to the conclusion we could use Fred as a body double on the table and use the camera monitor with Freddie (the clone)'s face on it to make it look like he is lying on the table. Freddie then acted as the doctor so that when he turned round it was the same face as was on the monitor.

I was really happy with the way the set looked as I think the lighting was very effective and that the table and monitor worked really well. 

We firstly recorded 10 minutes of footage of Freddie's face when he was lying on the table, which was played on loop on the monitor. To do this we put the camera on the tripod on top of the table and asked Freddie to lie on the base of the tripod while the camera was facing downwards.

Then we did the makeup on both the actors. For the clone we put a cut on his arm and then wrapped a bandage around his chest with fake blood on it. Freddie got changed into the costume he was wearing for the doctor, this was a black hoodie and jeans, with a bloody apron and mask on. Doing the makeup was very time consuming as the fake blood took a very long time to dry. 

We started the shots with a long shot of all of the action, this was the safety shot. It started with Fred lying on the table, and we had an idea of obstructing his face with some of the bottles and vases. Freddie started at the top of the stairs, then walked down, tied his apron, picked up a few tools and then turned around as if he was operating on the clone. 

This lasted about 1min30s so I was quite sceptical about the fact that the time may go over 2min as we still had to add in the montage scene and the reveal. 

I was overall happy with the safety shot and I think that the new and changed idea was very effective and a lot less complicated as we did have the actors changing round for the face reveal, but the changed idea made it a lot more simple. 

We then stared shooting the action from different angles, and doing some close ups. I thought that these looked very effective and am excited to see them when we stared editing and putting it all together. We took it in turns doing shots so we all got the experience of working the camera. As camera woman I was mainly in charge of positioning the camera where I thought the shots would look best but of course the people in my group communicated their ideas and put the camera where they wanted in the shots they did. 

Another thing that changed on our shoot day was that we had another person join our group for the day. He wasn't able to go to his shoot day for covid related issues so he helped with ours so he could get the experience of shooting. 

Shooting all of the close ups and mid shots of every action we wanted, we shot the reveal of the faces and the chip being removed and looked at. For the reveal, we had Freddie sat on the chair with the monitor next to him, then we did a focus pull from his face to the monitor to show that they are the same person. 

Then we had shot all of the action shots and all the shots that we needed both actors in. After a break we only needed one of the actors which was Freddie, as we needed to do a shot of him lying on the table as the clone with his face in it. However we made a mistake as we didn't take pictures of Freds makeup in order to maintain continuity. This is something I have learnt that we need to do and can use it in future shoots that I do.

On the shoot day I learnt how many shots we realistically need in order to get everything right. A new technical skill I leant was how to do a focus pull, as I thought it would be a lot more complicated than it actually is. 

When we shot the close ups at the end of our shoot day I learnt about how to put the camera into 4k so that we could have the shot twice as close if we wanted to. We thought of quite a lot of shots to do for close ups while we were filming and improvised with them instead of completely sticking to the shot list that we had. 

In the shoot day I used a lot of the skills that i had learnt in the initial camera workshops, for example focusing the camera, which is a key and one of the most important skills, we used a lot. We also used skills such as bubbling the camera a lot, and this is essential to make sure that the camera is level.

My favourite part of the day was filming all the close ups as I liked working out what all the shots would look like and stylising them. I especially liked doing one where we poured fake blood into water and filmed it spreading out in the water and creating a pattern. 

I am excited to add the titles to the opening scene in post-production, as we have just about finished making the font so I am excited to see what they look like. I think that a challenge we will face is deciding and coming up with the soundtrack we will use as that is something we have not decided on yet. We have not decided much of the sound that will be used for this scene yet so that is something I think will be challenging.

Overall I am very happy with the footage we have shot and I think that all of the work and preparation that we have done has payed off. I think that we have a lot more footage than we need and we may have to cut some of it out so that our sequence isn't too long.