Filming Part 1/3

On the 1st February, my group and I filmed the bedroom scene from our film opening. This is how we planned our day:

10:30 - 12:00 

Iona, our actress for the protagonist, arrives at Pip's house where she is talked through the context of the film so she can get a clear idea of how to portray her character through her acting skills. She also has some time to style her hair and do her makeup.

12:00-12:30

Lunch break

12:30

Issy and Bella arrive

12:45-1:45

Set up the room (mise-en-scene)

1:45-2:00

Head shots of actress with hair, makeup and costume

Shots of the room, so if we need to film anything again we know where everything is in the room

2:00-3:00

Start filming

3:00-3:15

Break

3:15-4:00

Filming

4:00-4:30

Review over our filming so far and see what we can improve on

4:30-5:00

Clean up the bedroom

During our filming, we decided to film every shot at least twice. This means that whilst editing in post-production, we can choose the best shot.

We had no technical issues when we filmed, however when it came to uploading the footage onto iMovie we faced a problem- The camera only films in the formats MXF and MP4, none of which are compatible with iMovie. I spent lots of time researching and downloading conversion programmes from the internet, and tried ones such as VLC and Aiseesoft, but they didn't work because they lost the high quality, which defeats the point of filming on the Canon camera in the first instance. Luckily, I found a conversion software from the App store called Prism. It was free and converted the MXF files in a high quality to MOV files.

This has been a big learning step for me, as I have learnt all about the different formats that can be used when filming and how some software such as iMovie is not compatible with these file formats, however some more advanced programmes like Final Cut Pro, which I have used many times before in previous projects, do take these files.