Our final task of for this semester came as a location shooting production. For this task, we had to develop on a previously used and already existing piece of script titled “Stone Cold” (appendix 8). We had a time constraint in order to prepare one scene that followed on from the existing piece of script we already had and film that scene with the time constraint of just 5 hours. The crew had to devise a complete lighting set up as well as create a detailed storyboard, done by the director, which included all camera shots wanting to be recorded. In doing this the recording process would be more successful due to not wasting time making decisions during filming as well as all crew member knowing exactly what needed to be done and when.

We had a group of 7 people for this production and the role of the director was assigned to me. We had 2 weeks of preparation scheduled time, as well as 5 hours of filming time. The use of smaller group meant each person had a significant role which included a high level of work. The pre-production stage was a very successful process as lighting decisions were made quickly with no high risks. During the creation of the lighting set up we also concluded on the genre of ‘film noir’, relying on the lighting set up to add texture to the shots. This was a decision made by the entire group, making everyone feel as though they had inputted and want to put effort into the final product. We used 6 hours of preparation time, focusing on the lighting, any effects or props and working out certain camera shots which contributed to the success of the scene.

As mentioned we had a time constraint on how long we had to film the scene and retrieve every shot needed to make the scene look as interesting as possible. We had two days available with a 3-hour slot on one day and a 2-hour slot available on another. Our scheduled plan was to film as much as possible on the first day, leaving an available shooting day for anything that would need to be re-filmed. Due to each crew member having a significant role, it was down to me as the director to find actors from outside of the crew who would volunteer to help.

Lighting was a significant feature within this task, especially due to the choice of using the genre of Film Noir which reveals “the underbelly of society, expose baser emotions, concern trade on melodramatic events and represent the world as turbulent” (European film noir, Andrew Spicer, 2007). Lighting is significant within Film Noir due to the lack of colour. After studying different lighting effects we decided to use “fill lighting”, “low key lighting”, “backlighting” and “discussing lighting” (Shanovitz, 2014) to light our set and give the best dimensions as possible.

One down fall in the production was due to the two actors, we had scheduled to come on the first day, cancelled on this day. This meant we had no one to film and had to suspend filming until the next available day. This also made the scene less successful as I had to find two new actors who had a limited time to learn their script and understand the project. With filming suspended our filming time was then constraint even more to one available day with only a 2-hour film slot.

With a restricted time period of 2 hours the filming therefore had to be rushed and the variety of shots that had previously been planned had to be shortened to specific shots that could only be recorded once. This 2-hour slot also included having to devise the lighting set up, sound setup and the movement of camera in between shots.

This production had a successful start during the pre-production, and it was however the initial actors that let the production down and caused filming to not run as successfully as planned.