Our Filming Experience

We did a fair amount of research before going into the filming of our film opening. For example, we had to decide where each scene would be shot and what mise-en-scénes would best fit our intended genre - action. The wasteland portion of the film (the final few scenes) had connotations with a working class area in the north of England, which is a contrast to the conventional settings of where most action films are set. For example, 'James Bond' is famous for travelling round the riches of Europe in Austria or Italy. The other scenes are for the most part shot in an urban setting in our local hometown which fit perfectly for the urban setting we desired. The semiotics of the film were also thought out such as the costume of the characters. Personally, I wished for the protagonist to be wearing brighter or at least lighter clothing than the antagonist because it would easily signify that that protagonist was indeed the protagonist. As seen conventionally in many other films, the antagonist usually wear darker more mysterious clothes. However, to stick to the urban feel, I still desired for the characters to be in monochrome clothing, which for the most part we managed to follow. 

Before the Christmas holidays, as a group we planned to film over the 2 week period. However, not everything went our way as the weather was against us for the majority of the holiday. There were many floods and constant rain. With the rain and the expensive equipment, it was difficult to film the shots we needed at the quality we wanted. One of our main actors was away over a week of the Christmas period so it wasn't ideal for the tight schedule.

Our second attempt at filming was't much more successful. We had a couple of shots filmed and we were content with them. However, after the fact we pearlised that we did not have one of our props with us, therefore it was difficult to provide continuity to the film. Also it began to get dark and rain quite fast so we did not have the length of time we needed. Despite all this, we did manage to get one shot. The final shot of the opening.

During our next session of filming we got half of our whole opening done in one shoot. We managed to get everything from shot 8 onwards. However, we were not completely with a couple of the shots as either the white balance was not right or the acting was not sufficient to the quality of the film. When we went back to our guerrilla filming location we were told very quickly to leave the premises, not after we got the two shots we went for. This highlights the difficulties of guerrilla film-making without a permit to film on the location we desired.

On our third filing expedition we went out to film the first few shots of the opening - including GoPro shots. This filming was much smoother. We didn't run into many issues when filming these sections, other than attempting to film in-between bursts of traffic on a main road. The shots were continuos with the match shots that the other three filmed on another day.

One weekend when I was staying with my grandparents, I decided I would go out on my own without the rest of the group to film the section of the opening where we planned to have our titles. This was by a road in Guiseley, filming a few large vehicles drive-by. The difficulties I came across were being able to place the camera in a location where I could film a car drive past sufficiently whilst also being in a setting that fit the location of our film. However, I do believe I achieved this.

Our last two filming sessions have consisted of the final shots left to film, these were the middle section and the very first shots of the opening. The middle was difficult because we went back to shoot some of it because we realised we did not have one of our props (again). It did not take long to re-shoot because we had already had an idea of camera angles from the first attempt so it was not serious. The very first few shots was one of our most successful shoots thus far. We managed to get each shot perfectly in three or four takes. When we went to editing, the shots worked and complimented each other very well. We went to film with the intention of filming with a tripod, however when there was no tripod we had to improvise and do hand-held cinematography. When doing the running scenes this was actually extremely effective. Even the still shots were also effective to the action genre.