Filming Changes

During the production of our film there were some changes made. Some of the changes were made due to the deadline approaching, but some were minor changes that we thought would make the final film better than we had planned.
The first change we made to our film was that we had planned to have a voice over though out the opening sequence this was going to be scripted over some of the shots. After completing our footage and putting it into Imovie and watching it back. We noticed that when played with the music, the power of the shots and music together was enough on its own. We thought that the voice over would be too much and too distracting to the dramatic shots of Beth and the music.
The next change was that we decided to change the location of the bathroom scene. The reason behind changing the location was that we had planned to film it at Becky’s house. However we found it quite hard to film all that was necessary in the time that we had during our media lesson. As the deadline was approaching we decided that the best thing was to do it at school. So that if we needed to re-shoot the footage it was practical for us to do so.

The next change we made to our filming was the opening scene. In our plan we had decided to film Beth lying dead with a note in her hand. We decided to change this as we thought that it was too distracting from the pure shot of Beth.

When we had watched our animated story board and associated our shots with the actual footage. We started to put the footage in the right place. Whilst going alongside our animated story board all the footage was in its correct place but we noticed that to have all the shots of Beth at the start was too much. We felt that the power of the establishing shot lost some of its effect. Then of course came the remaining footage of the other characters. We felt that the link between Beth and the other character wasn’t clear enough, they didn’t really fit in and as an audience we would have been asking our self what is the association with the characters and Beth.
With this problem we decided to open with a brief shot of Beth in the river, and then cut to the shot where Dave is burning the pictures. After this shot it cuts back to Beth and then back to another shot of Dave, and so forth. We thought this would be a good technique as you are constantly reminded of the dead body and the association of these characters and what they are doing.

Another change we had to make was the bin used when Dave is burning the pictures of Beth. Unfortunately the bin we had planned to used was plastic and because the pictures were being burnt, the fire would melt the plastic, so instead we decided to use a metal wheelbarrow. It still gave the same effect, just was a lot more safer and appropriate.

Last but not least the change to the shirt we had previously agreed that the featured shirt that Jack would be washing would be covered in blood and he would be washing it. Whilst filming this shot we found it increasingly hard to find an alternate to using real blood. Everything that we tried either looked to fake or just wasn’t working in our favour. As a result of this minor dilemma I came up with the idea of Jack washing Mud of, of the shirt instead of blood. This was more practical for us and also looked effective because the association was still there as Beth is featured lying wet and muddy. This was a successful change and made our shot look more realistic and believable.