Review of Filming - Day 3

Review of Filming

After arriving to our location, we were able to set up our camera and begin filming straight away. We began by getting shots of the mese en scene of the church. For example, the stain glass windows, the crucifix and the pictures on the wall.
Because the church we were given permission to use was catholic, it was highly decorative so proved really useful to our filming. It was decorated with beautiful stain glass windows which the light shined perfectly through for our shots. (As shown below)

We were able to really play around with shots and lighting with our camera and stabiliser. We filmed many low shots of feet and high shots of the stain glass windows to vary our shots, to make our film as professional as possible. We also filmed two match on action shots so that we can show our professional editing skills to the audience.

-Caera Mendez

Filming Schedule - Day 3

Filming Schedule

For our final day of filming, we have been able to get permission to go off site during school hours, to go to a church when it is open, so that we can film from inside. By doing so, we will be able to complete our montage editing part of the sequence. 

The day we have chosen to film is 31/1/17. Our aim for our final day of filming, is to get as much footage of religious imagery such as stain glass windows and crosses as possible. Our main aim, is to get as big as a variety as possible of camera angles, movement and framing.

The filming schedule for 31/1/17:

0745: Meet at location (church)

0800: Set up camera equipment

0810: Film as much religious imagery as possible

0900: Review our shots

0930: Try various camera angles, framing and movement of different shots

1000: Re-film any necessary shots (both inside and out of the church)

1030: Review shots again and re-film any necessary shots

1100: Back to school

Hopefully, by following this schedule, we will be able to achieve all the shots we wanted with the diverse use of camera framing, movement and angles. And by doing so, finish our editing of our film opening. 

-Caera Mendez

Review of Filming - Day Two

Review Of Filming

The Church:

Due to us having to wait until around five o'clock to begin filming so we could get consistent lighting, the church was closed so we could not get inside. However, we were still able to film numerous shots from the outside of the church of religious imagery which we could incorporate in our montage editing flashbacks. We also had the opportunity to work and practise with the camera and the stabiliser. 

Due to us filming at night, we found it quite difficult to get perfect lighting so that objects could be seen on camera. However we were able to overcome this by using torches on our mobile and standing around ten feet behind the camera itself. 

We were also able to play with a range of shots with numerous framing and angles. We got numerous mid shots as well as low shots, this will vary our sequence and help advance our opening as much as possible.

We were also, due to the location, really able to play around with mese en scene, as shown in the images below. We had the ability to use real stain glass windows and crosses from the church. This meant that we can up the amount of religious imagery and symbolism we use in opening to make it as effective as possible. 

-Caera Mendez

Pre-Production - Make Up

PRE-PRODUCTION

Due to our theme of stigmata, we had many pre-production practices with SFX to create as life-like and effective scaring as possible. Here is some small short clips of our numerous practices with the latex and the fake blood.

-Caera Mendez

Review of Filming Day One

Review of Filming

Day One: The Cellar

To organise our day efficiently, we stuck to the filming schedule as rigidly as possible. This allowed us to ensure we fit a substantial amount of work in a day's filming.

Objectives We Overcame:

• The candles we used to light the cellar ran out after around 45 minutes - we had to replace these frequently, carefully ensuring we placed them in the same places.
• The ceiling on the staircase to the cellar was extremely low - we had to carry objects to the landing one by one which was fairly time consuming.

Overall, our filming day was successful and we managed to film everything we had planned to. As it stands we should not have to re-film any of the scenes involving SFX makeup, which is good to reduce the likelihood of continuity errors.

Mise en scene in the cellar

Mise en scene

When filming our opening seen we wanted a large amount of focus to be put on the mise en scene, especially the props and lighting as we belived this would be the most effecive way to portray the film genre as well as hinting at where the story of the film was going to lead. 

Props

We had previously done a significant amont of research into religous symbolism which benefited us during the process of choosing our props to include in our sequence as it provided us with an idea of what would work. We gathered bibles and many candles as they would portray a clear religious asthetic. 
Within the house of the artists, we discovered several items
which we belived would be perfect for our set and to help produce the eery atmosphere we were aiming to acheive. We found these old books, (shown in the picture beside), which were extremely tattered and had several symbols on them. We thougth they complemented our film genre suitably so we added them to our set. Beneath them is an old wooden box which we also found amongst the items in the house. We thought this also complemented the theme we were going for and I was please with this find.


We placed a candel next to the accumilation of books and the bible which, I belive, transformed the set into soemthing much more eerier and spookier to look at. The candle had a metal holder which had intricate detail surrounding the base giving it an ancient and more effective appearance. The candel also prodcued adequate lighting to light up the area and using this ensured that the lighing would stay consistent throughout. 




In addition, we also found this chair which was clearly rather old due to the several marks and scratches it had attained. However, this gave it a more mysterious and synister look which we belived would work well for our protagonist to sit on. The rope upon it was also added to increase the effect of the mise en scene as it all worked together to produce a rather feared and mysterious appearance.

 We felt it was relevent to include a cross during the opening scene since we were inspired by the large amount of religious symbolism in the film 'Stigmata'. In order to create this we found two planks of wood and created one longer piece and one shorter piece. We then tied them together using string to create the cross formation. After this, we added some fake blood at the ends of the horizontal piece and at the bottom on the vertical piece to replicate the areas that blood would have reached during Jesus' crucifixion.

Once the cross was positioned in place and amongst the candles, we thought that the tattered and broken look about it worked effectively and complemented the tattered style of the books and the old walls. Several, tealights were added around the room which not only produced light but also created a very mysterious and dismal atmosphere. 

The Filming Process

The filming process

The location we finally decided on was in an old cellar. This was currently being used as storage space and consisted of such materials and objects like paint pots and building materials which filled the area completely, however we saw potential within the asthetic of the old walls and the dark space to create an effective filming enviroment once the contents were cleared. Therefore, we took time out of our filming scedual to remove everything and carry it up to the landing untill we were satisfied with the location and when we felt it was suitable to film in and would produce the best picture possible. This is a time lapse i created to show evidence of the task:

This process was very strenuous and took some time however, fortunately, we had accounted for this time within our filming scedual and we were very pleased with the outcome of the location after the clearing procedure:
 

Filming Schedule

Creating a Filming Schedule

As a group we decided that it would be wise to create a filming schedule to try and organise our time efficiently.

As our film opening will include fairly complex aspects of stage makeup, we need to ensure that we aim to film all of our scenes involving the stage makeup on one day, to avoid any inconsistencies within the míse en scene. 

The day we have chosen to start filming is 28/12/16. We decided that we would use this day to film all our scenes involving the protagonist and the stage makeup. The other scenes (the contents of the protagonist's flashbacks), for example the shots of the Church, will be filmed on a different day. 

The filming schedule for the 28/12/16 is as follows:

0900: Meet at location (my house)

0915: Gather and organise míse en scene items

0925: Carry all the míse en scene items to our location (the building conveniently next door)

0945: Clear out the cellar, moving all the paint pots and other items to the landing on the ground floor
1130: Carry down all our míse en scene items; the chair, stool, books and candles
1145: Gather the two pieces of scrap wood and using hemp cord, bind them together to form a cross
1200: Apply blood to the cross in the areas of crucifixion
1215: Arrange the items of míse en scene appropriately
1230: Trial different lighting techniques to sample which looks best on camera
1245: LUNCHBREAK
1330: Begin filming all the scenes that don't involve stage makeup
1445: Apply SFX makeup
1545: Film the rest of the scenes involving the SFX makeup
1700: Remove SFX makeup and place the paint pots back into the cellar
1900: finish

It is inevitable that minor inconveniences will happen, and we have accounted for this in our schedule. However it is possible that we will continue our filming day beyond 7pm.