Filming Diary: Session 1

I texted my actress, Ellie, a few days prior to make sure she was okay with the arrangement. The plan was for her to come on the bus with me and then walk back to my house straight after college. We got to my house roughly around 5:30pm.

Once we got to my house we spent about 30 minutes getting Ellie ready. Not much was required as she had done her own hair and makeup like I  requested previously (natural looking). She put on the white Dorothy Perkins dress that I had bought especially for the shoot, tights and her own lace up boots. I provided her with a meal at 6pm so she had time to rest and gain energy before the filming began.

We began filming at 6:30pm and all of the filming took place in my garden. As I had purchased burning garden lanterns, it was very important that they were lit and spaced correctly to avoid any hazards. One of my parents supervised me with this to ensure both mine and my actress's safety. Before we started filming I placed some duct tape on the ground to act as barriers for my actress so she wouldn't go to close to the burning lanterns. Once the lanterns were lit and the camera was set up, I took some pictures that I can use in the future for my ancillary texts. We spent about 15 mins taking pictures and then roughly 1 hour and 45 mins filming.

Unfortunately we were on a tight schedule so I wasn't able to take any behind the scenes photographs. But I did take lots of pictures for the ancillary texts so I will insert one here so you can get an idea of how my filming setup looked. The rest of the ancillary pictures will be featured in a separate post.

As the majority of the filming done in this session required the actress lipsyncing, I printed out a copy of the lyrics for her to look over if she forgot. Also, I played the song on my IPhone while we were filming to ensure her timing was precise. I thought this method would be much easier and more portable than bringing my laptop or IPad outside for the shoot. This way I was able to keep it in my pocket so the sound was loud enough for my artist to hear, while being in a safe place.

We wrapped up this session of filming at about 8:30pm and I would regard this as being a very successful video shoot. We kept on schedule and everything we planned to film was filmed. Which means its unlikely we'll have to re-shoot. Me and my actress will be filming again on Friday the 22nd in the afternoon in some woods and a graveyard in my village. We both have a free afternoon after college so we took advantage of this time.