On Thursday 10th March, Friday 11th March and Thursday 17th March, we started filming ‘Bruises’, starting with Shot 1, Scene 1 on Thursday 10th. The first day was a success; we filmed everything that the shooting schedule suggested we shoot on the day. However, when the Friday approached, we came across a few problems. Our actors told us they could only stay until 6:00pm that evening, so we ended up only filming half a scene, out of the three we were meant to be that day. Jenna and I decided to schedule another day in which our actors could make for the whole day. On Thursday 17th, our actors again couldn’t attend the whole day. This was becoming problematic for Jenna and I, as we preferably wanted to get filmed in those three days. We then had to schedule two more days. On the two days we scheduled, our actors told us they couldn’t make it again, and on the second day of re-scheduling, the rooms in the school that we needed to shoot in weren’t available when we could film.
Due to these problems, we have decided to re-shoot, with different actors, on a day in Easter, so we can spend a whole day to film all the scene's in the house.
Plan of the day:
We decided on two separate days to film with a new actor playing the father. We chose Jenna’s real-life dad, as we thought it was more realistic and used forms and conventions rather than having a teenager play the father, and because he was reliable.
We chose to film one day in Easter, and a day in school for all the shots that are in a school setting, we wanted students of the school in shot as well; this is why we decided to shoot on a school day, to make it a more realistic setting.
On the first day, we started by sticking blue gels to all the lights in the house, as we want the house to physically look cold and have an unhappy tone to it. This was done by cutting up the sheet into small round pieces, to be stuck over the spotlights in Jenna's kitchen. Then we clipped a large piece over the main light source in Jenna's bedroom and any other lights that were on in the house.
This was where my post 12 advanced workshop came to use, as I applied my knowledge of light manipulation when setting up the lighting for Jenna's bedroom. We wanted to be able to see the father's shadows on the walls and on 'Grace's' face. However this proved difficult, as we could see too many shadows of the camera on Zoe's face if the lighting was too harsh, therefore we didn't quite get the effect of the shadows as much as we hoped, but there were still some. In the future, I would take this into account, maybe try more lighting positions, which was difficult for us, as there was little space to manoeuvre with me on camera, the lighting positioned in the hall and the actor trying to get into the small doorway into Jenna's room.
When filming, we took pictures of positions of props, in order to handle issues such as continuity. This proved very helpful, as we kept continuity issues to a minimum. We made the decision on the day of having just a make-up set on the bed, as the art set didn't use forms and conventions as it was a box of crayons, which looked quite childlike. Therefore in the future, we would plan our props more carefully, as this was the only art set we had between us.
What we also decided in this scene was to have the father sweep the make-up onto the floor, as Jenna has white walls, which we were frightened of ruining if we were to throw make-up on. We discussed the possibility of putting a number of white pieces of paper on the wall and adjusting the lighting so it looked like the wall, but we thought it would look better visually if we had authenticity of a floor or a wall. Therefore we decided to throw it on the floor, which inevitably, due to editing as well, looked more conventional.
Postcard designs:
When filming 'Grace's' death, I took my pictures for my postcard designs, as we had just put make-up bruises on Zoe. After the scene was finished I took a number of photo's for my final design. This is an example of the pictures I had taken, also showing the make-up design skills that Jenna had in applying bruises on Zoe's skin.
This is a video of Jenna applying the bruises to Zoe:
Next we had a few other problems with the scene including Grace's father sitting in the living room. The natural lighting was too strong in the living room, as there were various windows, including two large french doors. Also, the blinds and walls in the room were yellow, therefore it gave the shot more of a warm feeling, whereas we wanted the blue tone to the shot.
Therefore we left that scene till the end of the day. In the future, we will have to take the colours of the room into consideration, as we didn't realise the effect the yellow blinds would have on the overall shot.
We moved on to the first scene's, in which we had some problems filming Zoe running up the stairs. There was little room to see the camera screen, therefore the first few shots were wonky. However, having learned from filming first time round having the similar problem, we remembered to rewind the tape and check to see if it was ok, and filmed it again.
Finally, we filmed the last scenes of the day, which was the scene with Grace’s father in front of the television. We tried a number of camera positions, as the original place we had on the shot list and storyboard didn’t quite work in Jenna’s front room.
We tried a high shot, but as there was little support, we thought it was too unstable and you could tell in the footage. We decided on the shot behind the Father, switching television channels. We decided this was visually best as well, as you could see the outlines of the father due to the dark room and the television being the only light source.
The only other problems we had with lighting on filming on the first day was sorted, as we put black bin bags over windows to stop so much natural lighting coming into the rooms.
We also had to film the shots outside Jenna’s house. This proved problematic, as it was too light outside to see the lights flick on. Therefore we turned on the ‘spotlight’ button on the camera, which made the shot seem significantly darker. We were pleased with the decision we made on the day to do this, as you can clearly see in the film the lights on in the house.
The only other problems we had with lighting on filming on the first day was sorted, as we put black bin bags over windows to stop so much natural lighting coming into the rooms.
Second day of shooting:
First we started with the classroom scene with the pupils and teacher.
We arranged a year 11 class and a teacher to film with us on the day, however unfortunately we didn't have a lot of time with them, so we decided to run through the camera angles and positions we would have for each shot to make filming run smoothly. This proved a great decision for us, which we would consider for future filming, as it cut a lot of time trying to get the shot to look right when the actors are involved.
After this, we filmed the art room scene.
We found this similarly simple to film, however, there was a classroom scheduled in there when we were filming. This proved helpful to us in the end, as the class was a year 11 one, which is the year Grace is meant to be in.
There were a few problems with noise levels, as there was a pupil working on the sewing machine on the day, but we asked her to stop whilst shooting. Apart from that, there were little problems.
Finally, we moved onto the quad scene. This proved slightly more problematic, as it was lunch time, there were pupils moving around and it was tremendously windy that day, therefore the sound levels were a slight problem. We decided that the actors we were going to use for this scene playing Grace’s Friends were not right for the part, as they didn’t look old enough, therefore we changed the actors, and we were much happier with this decision in the end.
That was the end of production.
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