Editing Drama

I have enjoyed editing the drama so far and it's good to see if coming together, which the first half is looking like how we planned it which is great. What would've helped a lot is if we took more shots from different angles and took more time with everything, instead of the shots we originally thought would be more important as I'm not too sure it's making sense at the minute. Apart from that the film is looking really nice and editing it hasn't been a pain. I have to use colour correction in some shots but not too much, just darkening some where the light has been too strong. Another effect that has saved a couple of good shots is the stabilizer, as there was a few cutaways that really needed to be in the film, but were quite shaky. But after putting this effect on it has saved the shots. 

At the minute the edit doesn't have any sound on since that is being edited separately in ProTools, so I haven't seen the edit with any sound on, which I think will help it a lot and bring it all together nicely. 

Location Day 3 (Final day)

I think that today went a lot smoother than yesterday and took a lot less time as all the lengthy shots were filmed yesterday and we also had a better understanding on what we were doing. We still had the trouble with the zoom draining our batteries and Hannah had to go buy another pack to get through the day, which luckily they did. We also filmed the panic attack scene today which was hard to watch as Jonathan did a really good job at acting it out and got emotional, which will work really well for the film. At the end of the day which was a lot earlier than yesterday, we started on clearing out the room, packing everything up and putting the room back to how it originally looked. A big downside was the amount of stuff that we had, and to make it cheaper we ordered just one 6 seater taxi to get us all and the equipment back to Oliver's accommodation. We managed to do this although the back of the taxi was packed and we had stuff piling on top of us. It's been a good experience going out to this sort of location and getting a film a mature professional actor which is something I have never done before. 

Location Day 2

Today was the first day of filming and it took a lot longer than we expected, because of making sure we had plenty of each shot just in case and trying to work around the small space we had with all of our equipment as we had to move the light around after each shot and sometimes all of the equipment. It has been a fun experience so far and Jonathan has been really chilled with us as we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get things done. There were no technical difficulties with the camera and all the shots do look really good filmed on a Canon 70D. However even though we did get good sound throughout the day the batteries in the zoom would keep draining really quickly, and Hannah could only use it for about half an hour before she needed to stop and change them over, which meant we went through a full packet of batteries in a day and lost some time. At the end of filming we let Jonathan go home and then we started to tidy up the room ready to start filming the first half of the film tomorrow as soon as we get there. 

Location Day 1

Our main goal today was to get the room set up to look like it has been lived in and to make it less obvious that it is a nursing home room. We arrived at Woodhill Grange on Monday morning with all the props that we have been gathering for about a week and started setting up. We changed the bed covers, put posters up, put photoframes on the desk and best side tables and other general props like books and drinking glasses. 

We have decided that it's going to be easier to shoot the second half of the film first, so after we got the room set up like this we began to mess it up by piling plates and glasses around everywhere, having rubbish all over the floor and spilling out the bin, the bed covers messed up and clothes hanging out of drawers. This is because the second half of the film shows our character 'George' after he has a panic attack before trying to go outside, as he goes into the wardrobe to calm himself down. This happens to George everyday so we wanted to show the room slowly start to build up with rubbish as he never leaves the room.

Prop list

Props

General

Key

Ukulele

Field Poster

Empty cans/packets (labels removed)

Empty tins (labels removed)

Envelopes

Bowls

Plates

Books

Empty bottles (labels removed)

Alarm clock

Small notebook

Pen

Chain/string for key

Party hat

Whistle

Photo frame

Small bin

Bed sheets

Happy birthday candles

Happy birthday banner

Map poster

Deodorant cans

Furniture/Large items

Table/desk

Hangers

Plant

Costume

Red tie

Pyjama bottoms

Red coat

Clothes for wardrobe

Shirt

Black tie

Smart shoes

Short films on Agoraphobia

To help collect some influences for our film I have been researching into some other films that have been made around the topic of Agoraphobia, and to get some idea of how different people are going about filming this sort of subject. I have found some films that have taken completely different approaches to filming a drama about Agoraphobia, especially the film called 'Blurry Beating' which is a short by Stephane Payen
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xk8qjf_blurry-beating-a-short-film-about-agoraphobia_shortfilms
I like this film as it shows how a man living in one of the busiest cities in the world, New York, deals with his fear of leaving his home, which he decides to do in this film. The narrative and style is very different to how we are planning to film ours as first of all we are having no dialogue included in the film we're just going to use the characters emotions to tell the story. However it has helped to see how other film makers have filmed their actors panicking about the fear of being outside