The Meeting 2: Shooting

When it finally came to shooting our new 'meeting' film, we were faced with the issue of one of the group members not being at school so the camera person also had to direct the actors. Another issue occurred that we were prepared for which was bad weather. However thanks to our planning we were able to shoot an alternative opening shot in the corridor outside the classroom we were filming in.

We filmed again with the flip cameras although this time we were given tripods which was a very helpful addition.  I think we could have improved our filming session by rehearsing the acting as well as just organising the location and deciding on the camera movements. We didn't have a long time to film so it would have been ideal if we had practised and set up the props before we started shooting. All in all, I think that despite the problems we faced the group was much better organised and the improvement should be reflected in the final cut of the second meeting film.

The Meeting 2: Planning

Once the group watched the video of the first filming task and received feedback from the rest of the class, we decided that in order to improve, we needed our next effort to planned in greater depth. To begin with we changed the story to make it easier to follow. We wanted to depict a situation that would allow us to use different shot types so we changed our idea to a job interview. In the scenario, the interviewee becomes distracted which meant we could use an eyeline match as shown below in our first storyboard.


Some things we needed to consider in coming up with our storyboard were:

• Location: we chose a job interview because we knew it would be easy to make a classroom in the school look like an office and it had to be somewhere that wouldn't be too noisy. Another advantage was that the classroom was well lit
• Props and costume
• The weather as it would have an impact on whether or not we did our external establishing shots inside or outside (in the end, the establishing shot was filmed indoors)
• Limitations we would face and how we would get around them: for example, setting the tripod on a table to film at a higher angle
• Where the camera-person would be filming from so we didn't break the 180 degree rule and ensured continuity

After this I was given the task of writing the script. I had to write one that would be easily adaptable, simple and stuck to the basic plot. It also had to fit the given time frame of a few minutes and effectively communicate the stage directions to the actors as shown below in the first draft.