Pictures From Filming In The Woods-Jess Smith

Laura standing in position, ready to be filmed

Maria using the steady cam

Maria using the steady cam

Sam filming using the steady cam

WOOD SCENE - Behind the Scenes - Sam McLeish

Setting the white-balance on the camera.

Instead of using a tripod like we planned, we used a stedicam because it was available. It took a bit of time for us to get used to but it turned out to work in our favour because a tripod would have got extremely muddy due to the rain. However, it did create a little bit of shake but this isn't too much of an issue because it can show to the audience that the character is clearly out of her comfort zone of the hall.

Evaluation of the shoot

HALL SCENE Behind the Scenes - Setting The White Balance by Maria Beardall

We had to do two white balance checks/adjustments as we decided it was more atmospheric if we turned the lights off, therefore the first video is of the first time we changed the white balance and the second time is adjusting it to the lights then being off.

We always set the white balance so we don't get orange or blue toned whites - in this case, as the lights were of, it would have been blue tinged and would'nt have looked correct.

HALL SCENE Behind the Scenes - Backlighting Explained by Maria Beardall

We heavily concentrated on our lighting as the main place we were filming for this scene was opposite a window that obviously held a lot of its own natural lighting - which then means that the inside, where are character would be standing would be dark.

Therefore we used and LED light and reflector to bring some more lighting in to hightlight her face and focus on her in opposed to the outside.

We found our Media tecnician's blog section about lighting very valuable to learn and take away knowledge to apply to our own filming -  http://hhsfmediafilmhelp.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/lighting. 

This was our main 'go to' post on their blog; http://hhsfmediafilmhelp.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/lighting.

Outside the school

Inside the hall

HALL SCENE - Overview of How the Filming Went - Sam McLeish

HALL SCENE - Timelapse - Sam McLeish

HALL SCENE Behind the Scenes - Creating Our Character by Maria Beardall and Jess

We asked Sam's friend Lozza if she would kindly play the role of our main character Eliza. She fortunately accepted.

Before we made her entail everything we wanted Eliza to be like, Lozza was wearing the white dress we asked, ripped black tights, black feather earrings and her hair was unstyled.

Before we styled Lozza

Jess curling Lozza's hair

Adding the eyeshadow

Lozza's hair was curled and she wore gold eyeshadow on her eyelids and under her eyes, almost like an eyeliner. This was done to draw attention to her eyes to emphasise her unsettled feeling. It came out well through the camera lense. We used a gold glitter because I (Jess) already owned it, therefore no extra costs were needed and it worked well with the white dress and also added some colour to the frame. 

She didn't wear her feather earings because they weren't in the costume brief and had curly hair. 

CU of the eyeshadow

HALL SCENE Behind the Scenes - Our Set Up by Maria Beardall and Jess Smith

As you can see in our set up, we had the camera on a tripod (extending the full way out for height purposes) which was almost always centrally opposite to the windows.

We also had our LED panel lights with barn doors to the right of the camera used as a fill light to really give our main character/actress more light on her face for close ups etc.

We also used a reflector to give even more light, which will look natural to the audience, to create more light as she is being back light by the natural light from the windows.

We also used the iphone flashlight for exrtra lighting for one particular scene. We did this because the LED panel light worked really well to light one side of her face, but we wanted to light both sides of her face for a certain shot. Therefore, as she walked towards the camera for this the moving shot I (Jess) pointed the flashlight on the left side of her face whilst Maria walked opposite me with the LED panel. We made sure we walked carefully at the same pace to ensure both sides were equally lit. Although we didn't prepare for using this type of lighting, it worked out very well. 

Setting up

Inside the hall (1)

Inside the hall (2)