My role in the group was Director. I found this role increasingly difficult as we seemed to come across more and more problems. However I feel we managed to pull together a reasonable (however short) clip of a film. While filming, I collaborated a lot with Becca, the cinematographer. I found this very helpful as we could work around the problems together and end up with a better result. It was difficult to fulfil my job as director while acting but this issue became increasingly easier as we filmed more scenes and I learnt how to do both jobs at the same time. I found the television Misfits (2009, Howard Overman) useful as a similar genre. The camera shots are similar to our film and a lot of the programme is made up of dialogue. I blocked the scenes in our film in a similar way to Misfits, often positioning the characters in the frame together if the relationship is positive and having them in separate frames if the relationship is negative.
Fig. 1 and 2 demonstrate the close relationships of the characters by being positioned in the same frame.
Originally, we were going to create the lead up to the climax of the film. The scenes we were going to film were a scene involving and extra character Darius with his friend discussing the past event of Emma demanding drugs from him. The following scene would be the flashback showing the previously discussed events. This would involve Darius pushing Emma and injuring her. The next scene would be the confrontation between Darius and Marcus (and extra character we later had to drop) who is Emma's boyfriend. The scene involves Marcus confronting Darius about hurting Emma and the two characters continue to threaten each other throughout the scene. The scene ends with Darius pulling out a gun. There is then a sudden blackout and the sound of a gunshot is heard. This creates the question of whether Marcus has been shot or if Darius missed.
The first problem that we had was that we couldn't film the use of a realistic looking fake gun in public due to rules set out by the college and the risk of a member of the public calling the police. At first, we tried to find another suitable location (that original location was the train station car park) where the public would not be involved but all the options we came up with didn't seem suitable. We then decided to alter the script to adjust to this difficulty. It was decided that instead of using a gun, both characters would approach each other with intent for violence. We would use quick cuts and low angles to create a tense atmosphere and give the characters power and status. It would then proceed to cut to black, leaving the audience wondering who won the fight.
We then successfully managed to film the above scene, as well as the extra scene previously mentioned, fairly easily with all the actors. However after uploading the footage onto the computer, we noticed that a large amount of our footage had disappeared and had been replaced by some blank footage. This could be due to us rewinding the tape while filming and recording over the top of the footage accidentally. This really let us down and we realised we would have to film the entire clip again. We did, however, feel that it would be easier the second time as we had done it before and would be practised at each of the camera shots needed.
Unfortunately, after planning to film again on several occasions, the actors we were planning to use became mostly unavailable. Finally, after being left with one actor, we managed to pull together a new version of the script and piece and use some previously filmed footage. We cut out several characters and changed around which actors played which characters. We had to play most of the characters ourselves, with Jennie playing Emma, Marcus (who originally played a character of the same name) playing Darius, Becca playing Emma's friend and myself playing Darius' friend.
While filming some scenes of the film we had the problem of only having one person to operate the camera, direct and hold the script and storyboard. I filled in this role while filming the scene of Emma and Darius. This problem occurred again but worse when I was not available to film and Jennie and Becca were both acting. They solved this problem by setting up the camera first, to then move in front of the camera to act.
Of course, if I was to film this section again, I would make sure we sorted out all of the problems that occurred ahead of time. For example, making sure the actors are available a significant time before actually filming, and checking that all technical things are in working order and we know how to use them so as to not lose any valuable footage.
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