The Forest Scene

The Forest Scene

After filming small scenes from our storyboard, we wanted to ensure that we had a large section of it done. Therefore, we decided to organise a day where we could film the forest scene. For our AS work, we only had to manage four members of cast/crew unlike this year where we had a maximum of around thirteen. This became quite a challenge to manage.

The people who could make the shoot were: 

Lizzie (Me)

Iain

Daniel

Clare

Sam

Dan

Kieran

Fiona

Alex

Although the storyboard states that Dan is called Ryan, we originally had his name as Jake, changed during filming and then changed back again later.

The night before shooting, I stayed at Clare's house (Selene) so that I was able to do her sinister hair and make-up on the morning. As for prop's we ended baseball bats, however, we found issues with this. A group of teenagers, running around with baseball bats was certain to attract bad attention, potentially putting us at risk with the law. Therefore, we all agreed beforehand that when we are not filming, the bats are wrapped in many bags and secure in a large bag for safety reasons.

At around 1:00pm we all met at Iain's house (which is not far from Clare's) since his place was closest to the forest. I had to wear minimal make-up like Fiona; Fiona was so dedicated she did not brush her ahir for days to get into the character we wanted Michael's group would be living in the forest so they would look run down.)

With everyone at Iain's house, we all set off to shoot the first scene: the field. I was constantly making sure that we were not trespassing as I had learnt from the car park shooting day. When we arrived we found a problem- thick mud. The field was coated in sticky mud that caused problems for running. I kept falling over and Daniel's shoe flew off at one point. Since we needed the 'bad' group to chase us, we had practice runs. After this, we found the 'bad' group ran faster than the 'good' group so we had to work on this. Moreover, we decided that Haden and Selene should not run/chase Michael's group. As a boy of power, we felt Haden should let his henchmen dot he work to portray the upper class attitude. 

The lighting in the shots was one of my favourite things because it really emphasised the colour of the location we picked. Although we had storyboarded a few shots for the field, we improvised and took more shots than planned as we felt it would give us more material for post-production.

After the field shots, we moved deeper into the forest. We decided to add/change a few shots.

One of the shots we added was Haden and Selene looking down whilst their henchmen run past them.

Both me and Daniel filmed the extreme low angled shot by laying on the floor and allowing Fiona to jump over the camera. This was a good way to try out new shots and learn different techniques.

Another thign we changed was the tracking shot of Fiona. On the day, we decided to make the frame a lot tighter than we had planned to follow Hollywood conventions and make it more dramatic.

As for other shots, Daniel experimented and added a few extra shots of Fiona running through a branch covered area. This made the shots seem more urgent as she scrambled through them.  Moreover, when filming the shot of Fiona falling, it only took one shot. Although usally, we film a shot a few times to ensure we get the exact one we want, we felt it was not necessary this time. Fiona did really well as an actress; she ran and hit the floor very dramatically.

One of the hardest shots to shoot was the low angled shot where Haden swings the bat down onto the camera lens. This took a few attempts but proved dangerous. At one point, the nails on the baseball bat hit the lens of the camera and just missed Daniel's hand. This taught me the safety and dangers of filming with props.

Once we had filmed the forest scenes, we moved onto the tunnel shot. Since the tunnel was full of water and incredibly slippy, we found the shot to be difficult to shoot. Also, the water was freezing and seaping through the actors/actress' feet so we wanted to film it as quick as possible. Iain keptslipping and trying to keep his balance whereas Kieran and Alex were bothered about falling it. After a few attempts, we finally got it filmed. Daniel got a point of view shot (looking behind a tree at Haden's group), which we did not storyboard, which me and Iain really liked. 

Finally, we filmed the 'find them' shot. Instead of using an extreme close-up, we used a close-up as we wanted other members to be visible behind Iain (Haden).

At the end of filming, we were all freezing and very hungry, so we treat ourselves do a big McDonalds. YUM!