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!!

Week Ten

This week I worked more on my storyboard and it is almost finished! I only have about 30 seconds more to do. Although I know it isn't necessary for this task for me to storyboard my whole film, I think especially because I haven't got a clear idea for this last part in my head yet that it's really important for me to storyboard it, so that I think about it and am ready for when I need to film it.
I ran into a few problems this week, my brother isn't going to be available for when I had originally planned to film (in the first week of the school holidays) and I don't know whether I should try to move the dates or not. If I make it the week after, then I'll have his expertise on set to help everything go more smoothly (he has studied film and tv at uni and been on several film shoots) but it will only give me about two weeks to edit. But if I don't move the dates then I might end up with errors and a much less professional looking film.
I think I will either need to find another person to supervise my shoot, or move the date.
Another problem I've had is the actor I originally had to play Kate's brother is no longer an option, but I haven't found many of my actors yet anyway, so that should be easy enough to solve.
I have also sent an email to Melbourne Cemetery to see if I will be able to film there.
I received a response from the cemetery, and if Leask emails them they'll let me film there!
I'm also going to contact Box Hill Cemetery, even though it's not open on weekends, it's closer and might be easier to film at.
Ten weeks down, nine to go!

Week Nine

This week I am going to go location scouting.
Josephine showed me this website today, Melbourne Film Locations, which shows images of locations in Melbourne including alleys, streets and parks. I'm going to look around on here first to help me figure out where I need to go when I actually go to the city.
On my day off on Wednesday I went into the city and looked at several alleys and areas around Southern cross station.
I found good locations at:

• Godfrey Street
• Finlay Lane
• An area outside a building near Briscoe Lane
• Penfold Place
• Gurners Lane

It took me quite a while to scout all of these locations, although they're not too far apart, so if I plan my shoot well enough I should be able to minimise travelling and going back and forth between places. I also found some of the locations which had looked good on the website weren't what I wanted when I got there.

I tried to work more on my story board but I found the last scene where the lyrics are just "the sky is green" repeated several times quite difficult to do, because of the timing of the music and the amount of cuts and shots I want to use in that part.

Nine weeks down, ten to go!

Week Eight

I still haven't had time to finish my story board or go to the city for location scouting, but I have completed more frames of my story board, I've done about five of them now.

I have also made some more slight revisions to my script.

But I'm still not progressing as quickly as I would like to, I think I need to start planning my shoot really soon! And make sure I have all my props/extras.

Eight weeks down, eleven to go.