Week 20

We ran into major difficulties as filming for this PSA project with the other class reached its end. A few of the toughest shots we had remaining were to take place during this week which required that we keep on top of pre-production if we wanted to be able to film the scenes at all. I was pretty happy with my pre-emptive problem solving regarding a scene that was set to take place in a cafeteria and involve prop movements and a busy background. I spoke with the other director I was working with regarding his creative visions and studied the two director styles that he had mentioned, Edgar Wright and Wes Anderson. I planned out camera placements and general concepts that allow for the scene to be recorded without any inconsistencies regarding props or background. Below is an example for how I planned out and pitched my idea for how we should record the scene to the group:

In the end, there was one scene that we had to remove from the end product due to a number of last-minute incidents that were the fault of nobody. This involved some intense traffic for the second director, who was set to take creative control of this scene, as well as a misunderstanding relating to location bookings. Combined with a lack of available actors and the lead singer/actor for the scene having the flu led to us having to make a last minute decision to scrap the scene. We may attempt to record it separately for our private copies of the video during the coming weeks, but only time will tell. Otherwise the video is ready to enter post-production and should reach a stage of completion in the coming weeks.

I also got an amazing opportunity during this week to record a couple of groups of performing arts students as they perform a scene from a tutor-made script – Worm Food Workshop. We were initially scheduled to record two groups of two, as they performed 2 different sections from the script, but ended up taking on more and more as the day progressed. In the end we managed to record 7 groups performing 3 different scenes during our 9am-4pm time slot, ensuring that, alongside the help from that class’s tutor, all the students of that class had some footage to look at. Below are some behind-the-scenes pictures from the day of filming: