Filming: Finishing up

So far, the only shots we had taken were the ones that included Sydney. This meant that our next filming day, we had to take the shots with out her, which were the majority of them! We planned our next day of filming to be the following Sunday, from 11:00 to 3:00. The way we decided to film was to start at the top of the street, the furthest from the "house" Jane was running to, and work our way down. The first shot was the establishing shot of the street. Our original plan was to take the shot from the second floor of a house looking over the street, but this didn't end up working. Instead, I set up the camera in the middle of the street, I had someone watch out for cars, and take a slow plan from the sky, down to the street. Our director Breanna, and main actress for Jane, had the idea to have her run through the background of the establishing shot. I loved this addition because it made the shot look more natural, instead of it being a silent street. Through the next two hours, I took shots of Breanna running from various angles. We took lots of unplanned shots, just in case we need more footage when it comes to the editing process or if one of those shots came out better than the planned one.

One shot we had an especially hard time doing was an over the shoulder tracking shot. In order to achieve it, I had to angle the camera towards the ground on the tripod and face the viewing screen of the camera towards me as I held the camera, still attached to the tripod, up almost over my head! We had to take that shot over 7 times before I felt confident enough to say that at least one of them was a good shot! Even though it was very difficult, I think it will be a very cool shot when we stabilize it during editing. The next couple shots we had to take were of Breanna running down the street, and crossing it. One angle I tried when shooting her crossing the street was like the establishing shot. I centered the camera in the middle of the street, with someone watching for cars again, and did my best to make the street mimic how the street looked in the establishing shot. I'm hoping the two street shot will be similar enough that it makes the street and neighborhood look asleep and unimpressive, to further put into perspective how magical the forest will be. Although, I'm not the main editor for this project so there's no guarantee it will work out that way, but I can still hope!

This picture is a screen shot of one of the shots we took through the day. We wanted to have the soccer ball Joshua is holding to bounce, but to do that we had to time it correctly. In the picture, you can see Breanna pointing to where she should be when Joshua should drop the ball. This shot was hard to time, but was ultimately pretty simple to pull off with practice.