I had finished most of my planning by the half term week and the rest of the class were in a similar position. Therefore the majority of us borrowed equipment and filmed over half term. However, my family had a holiday booked for the half term week, meaning that I needed to reschedule so that all of my actors and equipment was at my location in England, rather than Spain!
I decided to shoot at weekends because I would have more time, my dad wouldn’t have just come home from work and there would be much more lighting if I needed it. I shot most of my shots in the young girl’s bedroom the first weekend after half term and I was able to edit this footage and begin to play with filters and colour until I was able to shoot the second lot of shots. The following week I did most of the kitchen and stairs shots which I then put together on final cut with my other footage. In the evenings and following weekend I was able to film the exterior shots and extra little bits to make sure that I was able to make the 5 minutes of film that was required.
During this period, I was faced with a number of issues that meant I couldn’t film. Occasionally my sister would have birthday parties and parents evening events to go to which meant I had to adjust my schedule and film what I could. I was a little worried as the end of term approached that I wouldn’t be able to complete my work before the deadline which was Thursday 18th November. But I’d forgotten that by editing in between shooting, I was able to give myself a head start and as soon as I’d filmed my last shot, it took me about 10 minutes to add it into the scene I already had and have a finished film.
However, by spreading my shooting out so much, this did make it difficult to edit my sound design as I would always have gaps to fill in with shots and this would often lead to my sound being out of sync when I added stuff in. I decided to attach what sound I could to various pieces of footage and focus on small adjustments when all of my shots were in place.
Two weeks before the deadline, I almost had a finished film. I decided I needed to focus on putting my ancillary tasks together. I already had my ideas together and I just needed to put them together using Pixelmator. I had stills from my film and photos that I could use for both tasks as I had thought about this when shooting my film. It was just a matter of constructing them.
In the last week, as usual, I began to start living in the Mac room in my study periods, breaks and lunch times perfecting my three pieces of work. Despite all of my setbacks and delaying my filming, I managed to have a finished film and two ancillary tasks ready to hand in at the deadline!
Jess Marshall's A2 Media Studies Blog 