Wednesday 14th October 2009 - 1st day of shooting

Today was our first day of filming and... it was extremely stressful. There were so many problems that occured and interupted our filming, many of them were out of our control.

After we did our equipment checks and all of the cast arrived we set off to start our filming.

Intially we had a time schedule that was arranged during pre-production:

LOCATION NEEDED. TIME. CAST + YEAR GROUP. DAY

Media hallway and Start: 7.30 Dilpreet, Zahrah & Liam Wednesday
the media doors End: 12am Year 10


Maths Quad Start: 13:40 Dilpreet, Zahrah & Liam Wednesday
End: 5pm Year 10


Drama room 1 Start: 7.30 Zahrah, Extras, Dilpreet Thursday
End: 10.35 & Liam
Year 10


Green room Start: 11am Dilpreet & Liam Thursday
End: 1pm Year 10


History Hallway Start: 1.40pm Dilpreet, Zahrah, Extras Thursday
End: 4pm & Liam


Media classroom Start: 4.15pm Dilpreet & Liam Thursday
+ hallway End: 5pm Year 10




We organised our shooting in a way, we thought, would work best according to the times we booked specific rooms etc...

However things didn't go exactly according to plan and shots planned for Wednesday couldn't be done and we didn't want extra work for Thursday as there was already more than enough to do.

Problem 1 - The drama room we planned to use in the morning was locked and there were no drama teachers available to open it for us so we had to prospone quite a few shots - for later in the day.

Problem 2 - There was too much noise from music rooms and practise rooms that interfered with our film and were blatantly noticeable through the sound equipment. Therefore we chose to move to location 2, Maths quad, and come back to all the shots in the media hallway/doors later.
Also, because we hadn't printed of the Aladdin Rehearsals poster we couldn't do the shots outside the media doors and we had decided to reschedule them for Thursday, not knowing the other issues would also arise.

Problem 3 - The maths quad proved to be a very hard place to film, with many students and teachers walking through and classes making a lot of noise. The school's charity Fashion Show rehearsals were also taking place in the hall which is centered inbetween the quads and the music and noise also made it impossible to film. So now there are a few shots that still need to be filmed tomorrow.

Problem 4 - When we went back after school to start on our shots in the media hallway and drama room, there were more obstructions to our fillming. There were music groups rehearsing & drama rehearsals which made both of our planned locations unavailable. Both parties were leaving within the hour but it meant us and the cast waiting around doing nothing for an hour. We couldn't start on some of tomorrows shots because cast didn't have required costume and we didn't have access to the needed settings so we were confused and stressed deciding what to do.


Brainwave...
After a while i though we could perhaps begin on Scene 5, the scene where Genie has become a student and she comes to class where Luke is. When rehearsing the scenes through the camera we thought it didn't 'flow' and it seemed very stupid without extras to make it look like a classroom scene. So we changed our storyboard slightly and instead of the genie coming in to the class and sitting down she is simply meeting Luke from class and he is packing his things away and they leave together. We changed our closing shot to a close up of them holding hands which proved extremely effective.



Now we just hope tomorrow gives us enough time to take the rest of our shots ! Ahhh