Ollie Tristram

Monday 23rd February 2009

The weather is overcast, which is fine. I had arranged to meet the actors at my flat for 2pm and everyone was on time which was good. We all then headed down Shakespeare Street at around 2.30pm to begin filming the first scene in the script - the character introductions.

Whilst setting up the camera and equipment and organising the shoot, Josh, one of the actors took photos for my production/promotional picture album and then I began the filming. The first shot was of my character, Daniel, introducing himself and the project. We actually had a funny idea of having Warren, another character, walking on shot on the phone to a friend to emphasise his party-animal attitude. Then shooting continued as scripted, going from character to character introducing themselves.

I then had another new interesting idea of how to introduce the film, and that was to film random bits of footage while everyone was still in character to show that my character wasn't that familiar with using a camera. I also planned on making these shots blurry and have the film title appear on them in the edit.

Around 4pm the first scene was over and we headed back to my flat for a short break. Around 5.15pm we left for the second location, The Salutation Inn. The sun was just beginning to set (which I wanted as it worked with the time of day in the script), but there was enough light to film the shoot without the use of extra lights. I used a low angle shot of me standing in front of the pub to make the pub appear dominant and important in the background.

So far so good and the filming schedule was going to plan near perfectly, without any unwanted interruptions. We entered the pub and took all the equipment and bags down into the caves where the main section of the film was to take place, then headed back upstairs to begin the introduction to the night. This is where I switched from using the Sony Z1 HDV to my own Sony Handycam, as I wanted the film from this point onwards to look less like a professional documentary and more like a home-made investigation, which in the case of the narrative, it was.

From here until the end of the scene I followed the script very closely and as each shot was improvised we rehearsed them first and got the general idea of what I wanted, before I hit record. This worked really well and was efficient. The actors we're all very professional and there was no messing about and unwillingness to perform in the particularly dark environment.

One problem I did have though was that the Sony Z1 was going to be set up in the corner of the room and act as an observational camera so during the edit I could switch between my hand-held camera and the still camera. However, the cave was just too dark and there was no infrared light on the Z1 for me to use. So to work my way around that I shot a part where the camera had appeared to stop working, and we used the excuse that something similar had happened on Most Haunted, blaming the unexplainable.

Around 8.00pm. after filming had finished, we headed upstairs back into the pub for a drink and a reflection on how things went, and then the actors and then the actors and I went our separate ways.

That evening I filmed the final part of the film of my character Daniel talking into the camera in a video-diary-style, summing up the evening. I even changed the time on my radio alarm so that it fitted in with the script and appeared that the time spent in the cave was much longer than we actually did. This part was scripted to be filmed inside Uni the following day but I thought it was unnecessary to go back into Uni the next day to film something which made as much sense to film in Daniel's flat.

Then, the next day, capturing the footage to my Mac began.