Difficulties and Changes
Throughout this year we have come across a lot of difficulties, with a lot of them resulting in changes that we've had to make. From locations to availability we have basically had to re-think every aspect of our production this year, thus making it 100x more challenging than last year.
Genre/Storyline
For a while, we were adamant that we wanted to go down the Drama genre because we would be able to relate to the lives of young people of my age and the risks and social aspects that they are likely to come across. However we decided that our initial idea wasn't strong enough: main protagonists daughter/son has been involved in a road accident and have lost their life. The twist in the plot is that the man was the one that committed the hit and run and consequently killed their own child. We as a result switched over to an action genre film that can implement a car chase within it as we felt that this would be impressive if we managed to pull it off. Another change in storyline came when we had just finished filming at the steps near David's. We decided that our story didn't have much to it (plot and meaning) so we came to the agreement that we needed to add something before the chasing scenes. It was difficult to come up with an idea on spot, especially after having a story that we intended to stick to. After many hours of thinking we suggested a poker scene that could lead to the main protagonist storming out the house with a bag. This goes to show that sometimes it's better to sit down and thoroughly think about changes that might need to be made in order to advance your work.
Casting
Although some may disagree, I felt that when deciding cast members we only really had a selection of boys from poole grammar school that would be willing to act perhaps because boys aren't as confident with acting in front of a camera and being viewed by audiences. We did have several people that we were prepared to ask however most of them weren't available because of work or other activities they may have. We had to therefore change our initial ideas of who we wanted to act pretty much forced Luke act instead. This turned out to be successful as he was always available and fit the characters needs, however at times we could've done with an actor with more experience and knowhow just to add more quality to our film and to allow Luke to help out more with the filming aspect. We also had to select two characters for the poker scene when we came to the decision between us that we wanted to add this scene. Finding actors for this wasn't as hard due to the role having limited dialogue and need for good acting skills. Because of this I put myself forward as well as Dermot.My acting wasn't great but like Luke I was reliable to always be there on time.
Availability
We had to appreciate that our actors also have outside lives, and as a result cant always be available for our production when we call upon them. A number of times, our main actor was unavailable due to shows, or staying after school which for us was slightly annoying as we had already planned to go on these days. We had to therefore work around when David was available and make sure we made the most of his time when with us. I would have to frequently pick him up from his house whilst the others were setting up as I was the only one with a car and it made sense to do this in order for us to work efficiently. Changes that we had to make were swapping a few days around and cancelling times when we were previously going to film. We eventually managed to film all of the parts that David needed to meaning that availability was no longer an issue.
Vehicle
Trying to get both the Audi and the Astra together was an ongoing issue that we had. To be fair to both Luke's step-dad and friend they were both busy and doing us a favour. It was hard to use our time wisely, which was important as we didn't want the drivers to get irritated waiting around for us to set up. Fortunately both the drivers were happy to help us and actually enjoyed filming the car chase as much as we did! The day after filming the main car chase, we needed the Astra to stay on but due to communication issues he drove off instead! We tried to contact him to come back but by that time it was too late. We learned from our errors. We also had to change up the car we were using for the interior green screen shots, from Luke's friend's car to Matt's Mum's car. They were both astra's but varied a bit in year - fortunately for us only a car expert would realise this! This change proved to be easier, especially because the location for the green screen was Matt's Grandads so his Mum was able to ask for permission to use the garage.
Location
For our locations, we didn't want heavy traffic or public so had to be careful when selecting locations. We really needed to find a quiet set of roads with which we could set up our cameras in order to shoot our car chase, which proved to be difficult. Eventually, though, we found an area near a school in Lytchett that wasn't too busy in terms of cars or civilians walking dogs or walking solo and we managed to set up cameras along the road without attracting attention. with the foot chase scenes we had to make changes to the locations. On our storyboard we sketched out two men coming straight out of a doorway and into an alleyway. We realised that this would be hard to find after looking around at a variety of alleyways. We instead head to change this idea. We started filming at an alleyway near David's house which included a grass area, pavement alleyway and the a flight of long steps. When luke came to editing this he immediately identified that this wasn't going to work well and we should instead find an alternative location. In the end we settled with a location parallel to dorset way and used the bridge and an alleyway- like pavement.
Green Screen
From the moment we suggested using a green screen we knew that it was going to be difficult to product a crisp, clean image for our final production. We were all looking forward to the challenge and wanted to produce the best image possible. However, considering our limited budget we had to make do with a cheap green screen, hung up by coat hangers! We had initial difficulties with keeping the greenscreen standing because of the strong wind conditions, with the only solution being for two of us to hold it whilst the other person films. When it came to editing the green screen we realised that sections of the car and other objects such as David's glasses were being picked up as the green screen despite our camera work being good. We wasted a lot of time filming various scenes inside of the cars before we realised this, much to our frustration. Our only solution was to film inside an enclosed location (Matt's Grandad's garage), which removed the glaring and wind conditions, however setting up the artificial lighting still took a few attempts.