Shooting Scene One and Two

Unfortunately I did not manage to complete all of the filming for both scene one and two of Duality. The day started as expected, my group and I were all on time and had spent the hour before it was free preparing all of the propositions we had collected from both the school and home in the drama hall, ready to move into the room when it was vacant. However it took longer than expected to move all of the school furniture such as tables and chairs out of the room as it took around twenty five minutes to clear out. As soon as it was cleared I started to move in all the propositions into the room.

The class had been left in a state due to previous lessons in the room during the day therefore I also had to take time out of this process to clean the room's floor which could have posed as a safety risk to the actors. As I was doing this, my new actors for the press roles revised their lines until they felt comfortable with the position they were given. It also took a while masking all of the room's posters with pieces of art as many of which kept falling down however this was only a very minor issue. Looking through the shots of scene 2, I'm content with the majority of the shots however I feel that I should have gotten tighter in on the close ups of both the detectives talking. I feel one positive of today's shooting was the close up of Hudson getting infuriated by the reporters which clearly represents his anger and how he finds it somewhat comical that he is been mocked by the press for a job they cannot do themselves. The majority of the problems I encountered were minute and quickly resolvable such as struggling to keep the blinds down to make sure there was no sunlight entering the room, this was of course quickly resolved but, when combined with other problems, wasted around five to ten minutes of valuable filming time.

This picture shows my group and I in the process of clearing the room.

After shooting, I feel that the acoustics of the room were pretty poor therefore I will have to overdub the sound, including the dialogue, of the shot over myself with my actors to ensure that the dialogue is clearly and the ambience represents a busy crime scene to suggest to the audience that this is a high profile case before the two detectives have even been introduced. Despite the number of problems I encountered, I feel that I have overcame these quite well and, like scene three, will have to shoot some shots again but these will not take long and the room will have to be set up anyway in order to shoot the first scene therefore Adam will be available to record the shots that I need. I was also very impressed with the acting abilities of Jack Stiff who plays Detective 1 who talks to Hudson; beforehand I was a little concerned that he may not take the filming very seriously but his performance was the highlight of the whole scene as he clearly presented the frustration that the police force feel that Hudson has not yet solved the case, highlighting the pressure on the protagonist.

After doing some basic editing of the scene, it is clear that some changes are necessary, especially the sound which has been taken out of this clip, but there are a number of small errors which need to be addressed. One error which means we need to re-shoot is in the close up of Hudson talking to the press, you can see a poster saying 'London 2012' at the back, this is an error I should have noticed during the filming process however this shot would not take long to film again and would not necessarily require the two press members to return for the re-shooting. Overall I am pleased with the lighting of the scene but during the close up of Hudson talking to Detective 1, his face is quite dark therefore I also plan to re-film them two shots. Watching the silent clip, I am quite happy with how the room looks, especially in the pan across the room in the opening shot. I feel that the lighting and the mise en scene of the scene successfully represent this dark, dingy hotel room and I feel that I have masked the true purpose for the room well.

Here is the silent, very rough edit of scene two. It must be remembered that this is nowhere near completed and was recorded off of Final Cut Pro X with screen capture to make the file smaller in order to send to my media teacher, hence the icons which appear in the top right hand corner.

After I had completed filming all of the shots for the second scene, I managed to film the opening two shots for the first scene including the killer's walk through the corridor and kick of the door. The corridor scene took a while as I had to ensure that the killer's walk had to last around twenty one seconds, including time spent filming the wall for superimposition's, to ensure that he kicks the door exactly as the heavy chorus of Tame kicks in. 

I plan to complete the filming of scene one and the re-shoots of scene two in a fortnight's time on the final week of term as this will be the next time that all of the actors required for the shots I need will be available.  

In order to see what others felt could be improved in the re-shooting, I presented the rough edit of scene two to a number of people in my class to gather their thoughts and opinions.