Blog Update - The past week

Last weekend (15th/16th Dec) we managed to begin filming. The crew - Chris, Jon and myself - teamed up with our two actors - Will Hayman and Ollie Iley. We had a perfect day weather-wise for filming the pier scenes. So we headed to the pier in Torquay and rehearsed through each scene respectively before shooting.

With the Sony 5K we shot some excellent footage. The pier was naturally a symmetrical setting, with equal benches on each side descending into the mist of the horizon. Consequently it was vastly cinematic and appropriate for the noir, dated washed-out effect we intend to portray. I brought my Rode microphone to pick up some sound which plugged into the Zoom H1 for recording. Jon recorded the sound, which we will be reviewing in post-production shortly.

I would like the sound to be very much 3-dimensional on the pier, because a spectrum of noises from all directions will create the feel of unease we intend. The pier is right next to a humble little marina, and when the wind blows the sails create an eerie sound which resembles something from a tense scene in Pirates of the Caribbean. I want to pick up this noise and represent it in the distance of our action, so it is possible our original recordings will act as references, before we artificially create the sounds for the pier.

After a successful day of filming, on Tuesday we had our first school lesson since. We began some initial cutting of the footage, simply drafting together rough ideas for the way we want the scenes to look. It was also a perfect time for us to start grading and colouring the footage (some examples of the before and after footage can be seen on my blog). As soon as we bought everything to life, the nature of the Mexican stand-off action we shot meant the sequence luckily resembled something of Boardwalk Empire (which is very much a period drama), which was ideal - meaning our sequence was successfully nostalgic.

So now we must continue to piece together our film. Once we have a silent editing draft, we will begin to introduce sound - both diegetic and non-diegetic - to start crafting what will eventually be our finished, hopefully impressive, project.