Rest of Filming

I did a post about our first two days of filming in a previous blog post "First days of filming" where I also talked a bit about our plans and preperations.

FILMING DAYS

DAY 3 

Sunday 1.12

We had planned for Sunday to be a free day for us, but we ended up meeting up to discuss the editing. We also wanted to download the files of the xf305 as it was getting full. Me, Alya and Flora, and later on Josh, downloaded all our videos to three different hard drives. We first went through everything I had filmed on my dslr camera which took a long time. Alya had already started to organise her videos into different folders and so wrote mine down too. I was so impressed with the amount of effort she had put into this. As you can see from the photo below she had already come up with loads of different categories and wrote down every file name under the relevant category. We still came up with more as we went along, and each time we (the team) decided we wanted a video for the edit, Alya wrote it down. After we went through all of my files we started going through Floras, but I left here to have lunch. The xf305 were still downloading. Alya, Flora and Josh stayed to go through all the other files. I was happy to get all of this sorted out.

DAY 4

Monday 2.12

On Monday we got up really early (at six) to film the sunrise. Alya, Flora and I walked up the hill behind the student accommodations, where we had earlier on walked past to get to the park for the sunset. When we walked past it then, we realised it would be a good spot for the sunrise, as the view was amazing, but the sky was also very visible in the direction where the sun would rise. We set up the camera on the hill and started filming the timelapse. We were all freezing cold and had to stand around for an hour while the sun rose. Luckily it was a really beautiful morning. The sky was clear and the sun was a blazing orange. I even got some really nice shots of it on my dslr (using Alya as a tripod). I was so happy with the results of this shoot, and we were all so excited to see what it would look like in the final film.

After we filmed the sunrise we went to Emma´s sandwich shop to film her opening and setting everything up. That was really interesting and I think it went really well. Flora was talking to Emma while Alya and I filmed with our cameras. We got her cleaning up and filling up the food trays. We ordered our own sandwiches so we could film her making them (also because we were cold and hungry. She had on of her regular customers come in, which was really interesting. They seemed to know each other quite well and he ordered his "usual". We then got to film her making the expresso and sandwich for Goerge, and got a shot of him eating. I though this was a really nice touch to add to Emma´s interview sequence. Emma wanted to do the interview at four, when she usually closes her shop, so we had some time inbetween. Flora and I went out to the park to film some more day time shots to replace the ones that were unusable, due to the dirtyness of the lense. I think we got some really nice stuff, like the shots of frosty leaves and the river. After this we went home for lunch and then met up again for the interview. Flora was working at four so Rodrigo replaced her as sound person. I did the camera work and Alya was the interviewer. Emma was really friendly and we all thought she did a really good job. She spoke clearly and said some nice things and I´m also happy with how the framing looked. We also got a lot of really good shots from earlier, which was good, as Emma was to be our main (and evenutally only) morning/day time worker, so we wanted her sequence to be a bit longer. Overall Monday was another super succesful day of filming.

The questions Alya used for Emma´s and Sila´s interview

DAY 5

3.12

On Tuesday we were meant to interview Flora´s landlord, who leaves the house around five in the Morning to go to work. I met with Rodrigo before two and we got the bus together. We got to Flora´s about half an hour early, so while we were waiting around for Luigi the landlord we decided to do a bit of filming. We went out and it was golden hour, so we got some beautiful shots. The sun made everything look soft and golden. We got some videos of the sun, rooftops, houses with the light reflecting of them, a really nice park and some daisies. This was at three o´clock when Luigi was supposed to come home and meet us, but when we went back inside he Still wasn´t there. We ended up waiting around for him for a couple of hours until we decided to give up. His son said he´d be back really late. This was really annoying as it Felt like we had wasted and entire day. Rodrigo and I left together on the bus. We never found out why Luigi didn´t show up. This day had to be the most dissapointing of all the film days. 

DAY 6

 On Wednesday morning some of us went out individually to get some more morning shots. Alya and Josh had both agreed after looking at our footage, that we didn´t have enough Morning/day time footage. I thought I got some good ones, my favourites being someone walking into light on thei phone and a guy hoovering at a shop window (quite funny). After doing some filming we had a big break until eight, when we met at the trainsation. We were meeting the taxi driver for our last interview. Rodrigo was waiting for us at Sandy Hill with the tripod ready, while Alya, Flora and I waited for him. When we were in the taxi Flora recorded the sound, so we got the bit about him going home to his daughters to read to them. We didn´t want to distract him with the camera though, because that would´ve been a huge risk assessment. Alya and I sat in the back and filmed a little of the car and the lights outside. He drove us to Sandy Hill where we met Rodrigo and we set up the camera. Flora was on sound, Rodrigo on the xf305, Alya was asking the questions and I was using my dslr to get different angles on him. I got some really nice close ups of him talking, although it was a little dark. We were standing under a street light to try to get some light at least. The interview went really well again, and said probably the nicest things out of all of the interviews (about his daughers and working in the dark). He then drove Alya and I back to the center of Farnham free of charge. Our last day of shooting couldn´t have gone better.
On our call sheet we had saved Wednesday to be our kind of bakc up day, which worked out well. We had hoped to maybe film the taxi driver earlier, but this was the day he chose. We also did do back up shoots in the morning. I think we actually ended up following our original plans, timetables and call sheets quite closely.