The Beach

The Beach

Our last shooting day was at the beach. Since this was where the 'fight scene' was to take place, we needed everyone to be there on the day. Although we found this a hard task to organise, we managed to plan a day where all but Kieran could make it. Due to this, we asked one of Alex's friends to take his place and act as an extra; Joe Greenan agreed to help. 

The people we needed for this day were:

Daniel

Lizzie (Me)

Iain

Alex

Hannah

Dan Mc

Sam

Matthew

Fiona

Clare

Kieran (replaced by Joe)

We all woke up early and decided to get the train together. To ensure that everyone was there on time proved a hard task organising. To my surprise, no one was late and we all jumped on the train (apart from Hannah and Fiona who were going to meet us there) to the beach.

When we arrived, Fiona and Hannah were running late. Some of the actors needed to leave early so we did not hesitate to start filming. We began with some improvised shots of Sam, Dan, Joe and Daniel climbing the hills and emerging from the hill top as silhouettes.

The climb was quite dangerous so the actors had to be careful when coming back down. Whilst Daniel filmed some establishing shots, Iain and Clare walked to meet Fiona and Hannah and I began to set up the fight scene.

Since all of us had to be in the frame, we asked Fiona to film the fight scene as she would be dead within the narrative. This was difficult at first as we all knew exactly how we wanted the scene to look so trusting someone else was a challenge.

To create our planned storyboard, we had to have both groups facing each other on the beach. We assigned different people to face each other to represent the binary opposition or the best match. For example we had the obvious Haden (Iain) VS Michael (Daniel) and other rivals such as Luke (Sam) VS Jake (Dan).  We filmed us as a group clashing towards each other whilst we 'fought'. I was quite nervous as people were around so it we had to make it clear that it was a film. Also, since the adults are meant to be gone, we had to re-film a few shots due to people walking past on the beach.

Moreover, whislt the groups were running towards each other, we set the camera to take images, we thought these may come in useful alter for blogging or posters.

After the group shot, we filmed each pairing individually. This was to get a closer view of the characters and the action. Sam and Dan were keen to act and 'fight' so they prepared their own routine and we filmed this. We did not have much planned for the others as we wanted it to appear much more natural than staged. Since my character protects her brother, we felt it would be best for me to push him away from the battle scene. Then, Clare grabbed me from behind and pulled my hair back. For this shot, we had a close-up of Clare stating "watch them die" to represent a sadistic nature within the character Selene. Since it was windy, we already had a feeling that we may need to do a voice-over when editing.

For the final shot, we changed the storyboard slightly. Rather than Haden's henchmen holding me back, we had Haden slamming Michael to the floor; I filmed this shot. The first take tracked them quite badly and looked faked so Daniel suggested that he would fall rather than Iain pushing him.
The second take injured Daniel, and although I felt bad for him, the shot looked realistic and at a great angle.

Other shots included: Hannah pushing Joe to the floor; Alex grabbing hold of me and other various shots of the fight.

After the beach scenes, we headed to the pier to shoot some shots there. Instead of doing over the shoulder shots/reverse shots like we had planned, we decided a two shot over the shoulder looked better. We had issues as the rain kept blurring the lens sow e had to keep cleaning it mid-shot. Also, the wind was incredibly loud when we filmed so we once again expected that we may have to create a voice-over for it.

By this point, we were all incredibly cold and wet so we decided to get some food and a cup of tea.

After our lunch break, we decided to film the 'betrayal shots'. At first it was difficult as Matthew found it hard to act like he was trying to escape without actually doing it. The floor was also slippery and covered in pebble so we kept falling.




Since this location was a vital part of the film, we felt it might be a good idea to get a few images that may be used for posters. Inspired by the Harry Potter posters, we took pictures of Iain and Daniel face to face and then me and Clare.

On the way home, Daniel managed to get some improvised shots of the industrial buildings. These looked good with the movement of the train so we decided to keep them to experiment with for editing.

Here is a gallery of our day

Filming on the beach

We took some photos of the stand off and clashing

We decided to take individual character images as we were influenced by the Hunger Games posters

The 'bad' group were against the hill backdrop whereas the 'good' group were against the sea

 The train home

Filming at Daniel's House

Filming at Daniel's House

For the food shots and gathering supplies, we decided to use Daniel's house. Since we had used my house for many shots, we thought filming in another house would vary our locations to add more depth to our trailer. 

 For this scene we needed these people:

Lizzie (Me)

Iain

Daniel


After college, we all walked home to Daniel's and talked about the shots we needed to film and what angles we could try.

We began in Daniel's kitchen to film a few shots of Michael and Eve gathering tins of food. However, we found that the lighting was too bright so we created a low-key lighting and re-filmed the shots.

Since this scene is not very action-packed, Iain suggested that we act like we were in a rush. This would keep a good pace within our trailer and not bore the audience.

As usual, I found myself laughing during filming so we had to film many takes to get the shot right.
Another issue that occurred, was continuity. Occasionally, we left the cupboards open, resulting in us shooting more takes than planned.

After we had filmed all of the storyboarded shots, we decided to do some improvisations since we had extra time. Using low angle and high angle shots, Iain filmed Michael (Daniel) and Eve (Me) running down the stairs in an urgent manner. Daniel also suggested that he was filmed peeping out of the blinds, to imply that they are hiding from someone.
Moreover, we filmed a few shots from behind a blurred, glass window to show us running. Although the idea was creative, the shot looked humorous rather than serious which opposed the theme to our film.

A shot I suggested was Eve resting her head on Michael's shoulder; I thought this shot might portray a bond between the characters. Although I liked it, the other members felt it would not work within our trailer.

Another group of shots we decided to improvise were shots of Michael speaking to Eve about the 'new world' whilst she is upset and expresses her feelings. We thought this may create empathy within the demographic.