Grindleford 2nd Shoot

We had another group meeting and planned out the shots in more detail this time and allowed ourselves a lot more time to shoot on the day. We took the 10:14 train and got the 3:44 train back to Sheffield meaning that we had a very adequate amount of time to shoot. A lot of this time was wasted as we took tracks with us to Grindleford but unfortunately it had been raining all morning (putting off the time we had to shoot) but also meaning that the surface was too slippery for us to use the track or move around comfortably with the camera meaning that the tracking shot of the tree took us around an hour to get at least. We tried using the shoulder mount aswell but this was not working. After some deliberation we figured out that Lucy had no image stabeliser on her camera and we used mine to get a couple of moving shots as I did have one. After we got this shot we had to hurry a little in order to make our train but we managed to get all of the shots from the storyboards that we wanted therefore making this a succesful shoot, much more so than the previous shoot. I specifically like the shot of the protagonist looking in a mirror and then the antagonist appearing in the background of this mirror. We took a lot of time to get each shot and thankfully the words "That will do" and "We'll fix it in post" were not uttered at any time in the shoot so taking the extra time really paid off. I also think the use of the lighting we booked out was a good idea as we could shine it off the tree that had coins in it to create a really nice shimmering effect when the cast got close to the tree. (Making the tree appear to be magic as we had intended) We just need to incorpotate the long take into our Sheffield segment of the film now so this will be the next thing to work on.

First day of shooting

We got the Grindleford quite early and only had 2-3 hours to shoot. We managed to get a fairly good opening to our film but nowhere near the amount of footage we had intended on that day as we did not schedule properly. The shots that we got where very nice and it was clear that the location is an incredibly aesthetic place to shoot a film like this. We had found a perfect doorway that appeared to be an old entrance to a mine of some sorts and started the Grindleford section of our film from there. We then got shots of the protagonist moving through different colours of the forest and she got closer to the magical tree. We did not get a chance to shoot this tree on the day but there is plenty of time. The initial opening shots for this section of the film look very promising and hopefully we will have more time to shoot in future. I found that we also struggled a lot with the protagonist being so tall that she was hard to frame with the other character in the film being to short but we got past that in the end (this proved to be time consuming and attempting to set up shots would take a very long time) We had to get the actress back by 1pm meaning we had little time to shoot on this day but it was important that we just got something to get the ball rolling.

Grindleford Film

I met up with my group to discuss what ideas we had for the film that would also fit the brief and we sat for a few hours just coming up with ideas. Eventually we decided on the tree in Grindleford )The one with coins hammered into it) could be a magical tree and it could teleport the protagonist to an unknown location. We then built on this idea saying that the protagonist was attempting to escape from something in Sheffield, running through a door she ended up magically re appearing in Grindleford and not able to get back through the door she just came through as it is now a brick wall. The protaginst then walks off to try and find help or a way home only to be followed by a strange person that lives in the forest that she has re appeared in. This person attempts to stop our protagonist from touching this magical tree before it teleports her away but does not manage to stop her in time and to finish up we will be in a very strange and surreal room that we have decided to call "The Red Room" We quite like the idea of making this film magical as Grindleford itself seemed like a quite magical location, in fact when people ask where I have been filming they almost always respond with "Is that in Harry Potter?" We have cast ready to shoot and the basic outline for the events is already prepared so the film is already taking shape at this point so early on and that is good. The film will show a gradual change in both colour from Green, Orange to Red to show how the protagonist is progessing towards danger during the Grindleford scene. We already have this partly planned as different areas of the woods have different coloured leaves on the floor... red, orange and still green leaves but this means we will need to shoot soon before the leaves deteriorate and make this idea impossible.