Filming: Day Four

My extras came to my house around 11:15. Erin, Aiden, Zoe, Matt, Kellie, Kim and I walked from my house to the park, and my mum drove all the equipment down to the location.
We spent about an hour setting up tents, props and the camera and then finally began shooting.
It was a little difficult to make the extras act, most of them were put off by the fact that there wouldn't be any audio and so started miming bizarrely. It took a bit of directing to get what I wanted, but I got the shots in the end.
I shot the scenes of the arguments between the volunteer (Erin) and a refugee (Aiden) and the parts where the whole group argues with Erin before escaping.
After we finished the camp scenes, we packed up and I filmed a shot of Matt running in front of a wall covered in graffiti just beside the park.
We finished the filming at about 3pm, and then went back to my house for lunch and to relax after four solid days of filming.

Filming: Day Three

I tried to organise to get extras, but in the end only two came, Erin and Ryan.
Matt and Kate came, but I already knew that they would.
We all met at Box Hill and caught a train to the city. We walked to the location I had originally chosen for the photo memorial scene, and a security guy came and told us to leave. So unfortunately, we had to leave, and I had no idea where to go!
We decided to head to a park and look for some kind of wall that we could use. We eventually went to Birrarung Marr, and used a metal wall near the water. We stuck the photos and fake flowers to the wall, with the words "In memoriam" written above it. I used those words after I found a plaque for a bombing during world war two which began with "In Memoriam" and ended with "Serling remembers" (or whatever the town was called).
I framed the shots so that it wouldn't be obvious that it was near a river, and got all the footage I needed, Kate looking at the pictures, and then her and Matt being reunited and hugging (after several practise runs in which Matt almost ran Kate into the river).
After we finished that we had a lunch break, then we went to Godfrey Street to shoot the looting scene.
I stuck up the propaganda posters that I'd made on the walls, gave Erin and Ryan empty food containers to run with and Matt an umbrella to hold above the camera because it was spitting a tiny bit. we shot there, between cars and pedestrians going past and then let Ryan go home before going back to Finlay Lane to shoot some more running shots of Kate and Matt separately.
Then I realised a piece of my tripod had fallen off, so after finishing filming, we went back to Godfrey Street to look for it, but I never did.
Luckily, my dad said it was okay, and it would still work properly.
Only one day of Filming left!

Filming: Day Two

At about 11am my mum picked up Kate then drove us to Melbourne Cemetery. We spoke with a woman in the office and I gave her my permission letter from Leask and my phone number.
Then we walked around until we found the kind of thing I was looking for, a set of about 50 graves all with the same head stones. I set up the camera and tripod and filmed a few different angles and shots of Kate walking up to her parents grave and everything I needed for that scene.
That filming took about an hour and then we left and went to Finlay Lane.
Fortunately the construction workers were gone! Kate and I stuck up the radiation posters and put some paper and plastic stuff on the ground. I set up the camera and then stepped off screen to drop newspaper to blow across the screen. This ended up causing problems because we had to wait for the wind to pick up to be able to shoot properly.
We also had a problem when a car came to drive through the alley and we had to quickly grab our stuff and get out of the way.
After that we got lunch, and sat in the fake garden at Melbourne Central, it was really nice and relaxing there, and Kate and I are really tired, so we just stayed there for about two hours instead of filming one more scene like I had planned.
We still got plenty done though, so all that's left are the extra's scenes with Kate tomorrow, and the refugee camp on Tuesday!

Filming: Day One

Kate slept over at my house, and after getting up at 7:30 (ON A SATURDAY) we got ready to go. We got to the city at 9:30, and walked to the location on the Yarra River, for the “river’s a bed now” scene. We had difficulty filming, because there were pedestrians and joggers along the bank in the background of our shot, and rowing boats on the river. We had to keep waiting for a clear way to shoot, it was a bit frustrating, especially because if we had filmed on another day there wouldn’t have been many (if any) boats.

After filming for about half an hour, we packed up and walked across to the Royal Botanical Gardens. Behind the Sidney Myer Music Bowl was a gazebo, and that was the next location for the “none of the sunlight is safe” scene. There weren’t many people around, so after setting up a wrecked picnic rug and some rubbish we filmed for about 40 minutes.

After that we caught a tram to Melbourne Central for lunch.

Once we had finished eating, I checked Google maps to make sure we knew where Finlay Lane was, it was only a 5 minute walk away, so we went over there. Once we got there we discovered there was some kind of construction or road works going on right where we had intended to film. A construction worker saw us and told us we could wait an hour or two and they would be finished, but I wasn’t sure if he was right or not and I didn’t want to waste time, so I decided we should just come home and shoot the hospital scene instead.

We caught the train home and then began setting up. We moved all the furniture around in my lounge room, deconstructed my bed, carried the parts downstairs and reconstructed it. Then we used some blue curtains and hung them up next to the bed, we had a bit of trouble with that, we needed to take the curtains off the rail because they kept slipping off the nails in the wall, so we threaded string through them and tied it up. I printed out the family photos that I’d taken the day before and put the fake flowers with them on a table next to the bed.

The hospital scene probably took about 2 hours all up, because there was so much setting up (and then unpacking) to do.

But overall today went well, and I think I am on track to get all the filming done by the end of Tuesday.

Week Fourteen

Wow, week fourteen! It's been such a long time making this film, but I'm finally about to start filming.
This week I will record the parts for the newsreader (Eliza) after school, and then on Saturday when the holidays start, the film shoot will fully begin!
The monday of this week is a day off, so I'm going to organise all of my props. I'll buy bottled water for the refugee camp scene, buy fabric to make Kate's dress, and anything else I may need.
I'm also planning to get my posters printed:

The red and yellow one is a propaganda poster that I will stick up on the wall during one of the scenes where Kate is walking down a street and she sees some looters, and the danger sign will be in the street when Kate is alone.

I made these posters in photoshop, the propaganda one I made by drawing the striped background, then with reference to a photo of an atomic bomb from an old war photo I drew the bomb, and the font I downloaded from dafont.

The Danger sign was simply this image, with some editing and then this font, also from dafont.

I'm going to use this pattern to make Kate's dress, although I will probably alter it to make sure it will look good and fit Kate well (and not be open at the back, as is sometimes the case with hospital gowns).

I think the only other major prop I need to organise is the photo montage which I will stick to a building.

This is the montage, so I'll get it printed a few times, and hopefully it'll look good even though I've only made one page. I'll also add some text with it saying "lest we forget" or something similar.

All photos came from stock.xchng

I filmed the news reporters parts with Eliza after school on Thursday and put the footage onto my computer.

On Friday night I took the family photo and made Kate's dress ready for filming to begin the next day, charged the camera and made sure everything was in order for filming to finally begin!

Week Thirteen

This week is crunch time.
I'm going to do my full cast list, plan my locations and my full shoot.
I have finished my final write up of the script, written out all the roles I need to fill, listed which locations I will use for each scene, and made a list of props.
I also made a facebook event to help find people who are available and want to be in my film as extras or whatever roles.
I've added a page to the blog, listing the cast so far, and I'll upload my final script now.
I'm feeling much better about this film now than I was last week, I'm really pulling everything together now!
Thirteen down, six to go!

Week Eleven and Twelve

Both in week eleven and twelve I didn't have much time to work on my production, so unfortunately I had to abandon my last part of my storyboard.
With only seven weeks left, I'm starting to really feel the pressure. I need to work on this a lot more if I want to get it done!
Twelve weeks down, seven to go!!