Week 6

 This week I began filming. The location I used was a farmhouse in Waikato surrounded by unique landscapes. The farmland and hills were perfect scenery for the opening of my short film to show the isolated setting. I spent a lot of time capturing exterior shots to use throughout the film. When it was too dark to film outside I began shooting the dialogue scenes inside the house. 

The equipment I used included:

-Blackmagic pocket 4k Camera

-Crane 2 S Camera Gimbal

-Rode NTG-2 Shotgun Mic

-LED light stands

-LED light sticks

-Dolly and tracks

-Tripod 

I had to keep in mind focal length for scenes where the creature would be in the background so that I would have areas of contrast when in came to tracking later on. One issue I ran into was the lights reflecting in windows, breaking the realism of the film. I overcame this by being wary of camera and light placements to maintain the best lighting possible. Another issue I had was timing as we only had access to the location for 24 hours. We had to move around equipment from room to room and even outdoors. The Blackmagic batteries also did not last long so there was a lot of time spent waiting for a usable battery. Finally, the SD card filled up with footage before I had recorded everything I wanted to capture. Without an alternate SD card or the ability to drive back to Uni and get another, I had to take time to delete outtakes from the card. This resulted in another loss in time. Overall, the filming experience could've been much more efficient in terms of time and output, but I believe I have enough material to create the short film effectively.