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Candidate Number - 5343

'The Last Secret' Final film opening

Filming for our film opening

Filming day 1 12/3/11

This was our first day that we began filming for our opening. On that day we did not actually film any footage for our piece but recorded the voice over for Ella. We did this by recording the voice of our young actress and will later put it onto our film to make it look like Ella is talking to her mum even though she is dead. We had her read out each line and had her do each one a couple of times over to make sure we got it and to make sure we had enough to choose from when we edited.

Filming day 2

On this day we began filming the final scene which is set in Paige’s bedroom. We decided to do this scene first and not in running order as we felt it would be a good idea to do a scene that we may need to come back to first as it was our longest scene and a range of different angles and shots. We found that filming this scene ran a lot smoother than expected and we did not face many difficulties. It was the longest scene to film but this is was we predicted and we made sure we gave ourselves enough time to do so. The only difficulties we faced were being able to position the camera in the correct place to get the lighting we wanted. We discovered that different parts of the room changed the lighting that was seen on camera which we later avoided when editing where we changed the brightness to make the shots look continuous.    

Filming Day 3

On the same day as filming the bedroom scene we found that we had enough time to film more. We did not want to waste any spare time that we had and moved onto filming the next scene to get it completed quicker and move onto editing. We decided on moving onto the birthday scene as all the props we needed were ready and felt that it would be a quick one to shoot. We set up the setting to how we wanted by adding balloons, banners, presents and a birthday cake to make the scenario seem realistic. As the birthday part scene was only a flashback there was no live dialogue but only a voice over which we added in when editing. Because of this it was easier to film compared to the bedroom scene as we only had to pan the room to show the environment before and after and also a long shot of Sarah standing with the birthday cake. Initially we wanted to spin the camera around to show the destruction of the party once Nick enters but found this would be too difficult to make look good given the equipment we had. Instead we felt we could achieve an equally effective transition into that shot by adding a transition to make it look as though the shots dissolve into one another.

Filming Day 4

When watching back some of the footage we captured we felt confident with the birthday scene but felt that the bedroom scene could be improved. We could have left it how it was but wanted to make it the best we could and to do that we knew we had to re-film some parts. Before we moved onto filming the park scene we wanted to re-do this one first to get it done with. We re-filmed some parts where Sarah is looking at photographs of Paige as we wanted to get a wider range of shots and also wanted more emotion. We achieved this once we finished filming and felt confident that we had enough choice of shots to choose form when we came to editing.

Filming Day 5

On this day we had to film the park scene which was the second scene in the running order of our film. We made sure the weather was correct for the mood we wanted to create and chose a day where it looked quite dull. It was compulsory that it wasn’t raining as we did not want the effect to be lost by the rain and those kinds of conditions for the cameras would not have been suitable. Instead we settled for a dull atmosphere that reflected how Nick was never there to share the memories with his family. This scene was filmed fairly quickly as all we needed to do was film parts of the park to get the feel as though it was somewhere Paige was playing in. We did this by filming a roundabout moving to make it look like she had just been on it without actually seeing her. By doing this it also gave it a quite eerie feel as by now the audience knows that Paige is no longer alive but her memory is.

Filming Day 5

This was our final day of filming and was also the quickest as we filming the beginning of our opening. Our film starts off showing home videos of Paige when she was younger so for this we filmed a television with home videos on it to get the effect that Sarah is watching back memories of her daughter. This scene we believe was a good way to open our film as the emotion combined with the happy memories is a perfect combination to set the mood for the rest of the film.