Filming Day

On the 2nd of January, we all went to James's house as we had previously arranged. This is because the furniture of the living room is quite old, the room is spacious and we had complete control of the light. We all had separate roles according to necessity and strengths. I was in charge of lights as I owned a studio light and I have had experience with lighting before. James was in charge of camera operation as he had the most experience and he did most of the storyboard so he is most aware of the camera angles. Matt chose to direct the filming as he wanted to be in charge of what scenes we filmed as he was very focused on getting the job done properly.

Throughout the day, I was checking for any issues in the lighting in shot, too often was there too much light, then not enough. Through proper placement of the lights available to us, we were able to resolve these issues.

I believe we got a lot done in the hours we spent there. We worked well eliminating the scenes to film and filming them more than once as we wanted to play around with the areas open to interpretation left from the storyboard. This led to minor conflicts which were resolved quickly.

The actors were more than co-operative, Following exact instructions and more than happy to commit the time to us.

This doesn't mean the day went off with only minor issues. Problems came about that we needed to resolve quickly or it would seriously affect the filming.

The first problem we faced was the light. We couldn't have the studio light the way we had originally planned as it was too bright even with cover. I had to improvise and move it as far away as possible and  face the light the other way so it reflected most of the light away. This wasn't desirable but we achieved the effect we wanted.

Another problem was the room itself. Whilst there was a lot of furniture that suited the era of the 1940's, there was also a lot we had to move out of shot so it looked like a room in the 1940's.

The main problem however, was time. We had about four hours to set up, film and go. This put pressure on us and meant that the initial setup was quite stressful, especially when we had realised we hadn't thought of things (an Inkwell etc.). We did however combat these issues and we came out with solutions that fit the problem.

All in all, the filming day was a huge success as we filmed the majority of the sequence and we achieved some really nice shots.

Camerawork

We have recently talked about how we are going to film our OTS. We had some ideas when we created the storyboard but we had never considered it properly. We have decided to make it simple as this is typical in a lot of Noir films. It will feature close ups, mid shots, tilts and pans along with other simple yet effective camera angles. This means that the audience will not be daunted with strange angles as well as us being able to focus on the content and story within the camerawork. We may experiment with reverse tracking but we will not depend on it.

Fear of not following convention

For a while we have known the film (and particularly the sequence) was not going to follow typical Film Noir conventions. This was mainly because we had adapted a gothic horror story. This has become an increasing worry to us and we are now really concerned.

We were originally reassured by the fact we had kept to certain conventions. The conventions are as follows:

• We were using a black and white filter
• We were setting it in the original sequence
• The story and characters are very similar to the typical film noir (Anti-Hero, Femme Fatale). 
• We have experimented with Chiaroscuro 

The issues we have had so far:

• We haven't filmed it as a typical film noir (e.g. focus pulls)
• The title sequence itself doesn't boast much iconography apart from the handgun.

We have also had the issue of how the title of the film hide should come up in the sequence. The examples shown below are typical of titles in noir Films. We do not believe that the style would fit in with the tone of the film.

This is the sort of font we want for the title but we fear we will lose even more touch with  the conventions.