Filming

In the last week of the Christmas term we filmed in two locations, Christchurch Park and the Ipswich Waterfront. We gathered all of the shots we were scheduled to get on those days but unfortunately on the friday when we were due to complete our filming heavy snow and staff absence prevented us from doing so. However we are endeavouring to work out an afternoon or two when we complete our filming. For the time being further heavy snowfall has made filming in our locations impossible so we are for the moment spending our time updating our blog and beginning to log, capture and edit our existing footage.

During the filming we have managed to execute we have been keen to produce a variety of camera shots and angles which serve to add both texture and characterisation to our video. For example we have played around with focus in some of our shots so that our main character (Chris K) is at first out of focus and then comes into it as the camera comes across him. We hope that this technique will produce the effect of portraying the character as someone who is not quite in tune with the world because he is in mourning. As well as that we have used several tracking and panning shots to show the character's journey, moreover his meandering struggle with his own existence.

Disruption

After this successful shoot we were forced to wait until after the Christmas break to complete our filming, however there then followed several weeks of snow and bitter weather rendering our filming capability obselete. As a result we were forced to fit our filming into the first available friday morning but this meant that our 'actress' Emily Halls was unable to film so our own group member Emily Swager kindly consented to play the 'girl.' We shot for around ninety minutes at Christchurch Park, filming her 'playing up to the camera' as if the main protagonist was holding it and deliberately making the camerawork slightly shaky and amateurish knowing that we would be adding effects to make the footage look like old super-8mm film. We also filmed some shots with both Chris and Emily in frame so as to provide a link between them in terms of relationship for the audience.

Additionally we went on to film by Ipswich Waterfront, employing many of the same handheld techniques as we 'followed' Emily along the quay side. We filmed here for around ninety minutes again and were satisfied that we had garnered all of the footage we needed.