Filming - Day 4 - 2nd December - by Josh

 On our third day in Dartford we went filmed several scenes, including re-filming one shot from our first day (the long, panning one across the river) from a different angle (below).

 We could then use this shot to link in with the ones we filmed in Soho square as well as others that day. We then moved on from the river, and up to a bridge that went over one of the main roads that travels through Dartford. After we arrived, we saw the opportunity for another stunt scene; we could jump over the fence leading from the car park onto the bridge which both shots could link in together. This took several attempts to get as Dan was unable to jump over the fence, thus we had to think of other ways for him to get over the fence. He tried to simply step over the fence but we thought that this was too slow and the masked men would have been able to catch him (images below).

 

 

 There were several instances where I wanted to shoot again as I felt the gap between Phil, Dan and myself was too close. We found in the end the best way for him was to plant his hands on the railing and swing his body over (images below).

 

  Another problem we encountered was that there was not enough space along the rail for both Phil and I to get over the fence at the same time. So instead, Phil would go slightly in front of me to slow down, plant his hands on the rail and swing his legs over, whilst I would keep running and leap over the fence, thus keeping us both in frame (images below).

  For continuity, we carried these shots on with the 3 characters racing across the bridge they had just run onto. We decided to use a low angle shot of this, instead of a simple, eye-line match panning shot for dramatic effect with the bridge (images below).

  The low angle shot below is of Dan, Phil and myself running alongside a river, which we carried this scene on with a panning shot of the riverside.

 The image below is of James setting up the camera ready for filming the panning shot, and the resulting footage on the viewer.

  The following images are of the panning shot of Dan, Phil and myself running along the riverside.

 

 

 

 We also planned to film in Temple Hill (a section of Dartford) but Luke's ideas for filming there were not suitable, and despite us searching further around the area, we did not find any places that would look good or fit into the rest of the footage, thus, we decided to call it a day at that point, having got a reasonable amount done and pleased with our footage.

Filming - Day 3 - December 1st - by Josh

 Since we had a staff training day at our school on Friday 30th of November, our group saw this as a good opportunity to go up to London and film some of our scenes. We knew we wouldn't get all of our shots that day since we had a lot to do in London. This was because this location offered us a lot of good-looking, urban shots in a city that somewhere like Dartford couldn't capture. However, we encountered a problem during the week which caused a problem with our filming for not only that Friday, but for all our future filming. Unfortunately, one of our actors playing a masked man, Ryan, had sustained a stress fracture during Judo training in his foot and was unable to partake in our video anymore. James, Luke and myself had to think of an answer to this problem. After much discussing, we decided that the best course of action would be to use me in place of Ryan as the second masked man. This would work but it meant that I would be able to film very little and it was much more difficult to direct. However, with myself as one of the actors, it meant that it would be much easier to feel as if the scene had gone right from my point of view, e.g. if I felt one of the others wasn't running fast enough or if they didn't perform an action quite right I would notice and tell them, this sort of thing being difficult to see for James and Luke, and we wanted to view the resulting video as little as possible since this used up a lot of the camera's battery. Many times I would walk back to James and Luke and tell them I wanted to shoot again since I felt we weren't fast enough or we didn't do an action such as jumping over a fence quite right. I had to borrow James grey suit in order to match Phil; I only had a black suit which wouldn't fit in with the video.

 We did most of our filming that day along Southbank, where we used the skatepark (below) and the long walkway along the river Thames.

 

 

 As we were walking along the riverside I spotted a rocky structure (images below) in the middle of the path, and I suggested we could use it for a shot of us chasing the thief over the rocks. This shot took a little while to capture since it was difficult for Luke to keep up with us as well as keeping the camera steady, bearing in mind we were running quite fast and Luke wasn't able to look where he was going.

 

 

 

 You can see in the images below of us filming in an alleyway, which we felt we could use as part of our alleyway shot from Dartford. We chose to use a moving shot with the three characters running past. This scene differed quite strongly from our other running shots as the characters were very close to the camera due to the close, compact nature of the scene.

 

 We spent quite a long time in Soho as we had quite a few shots we wanted to capture. We started off with a running close up of the characters' feet (image below). Again, this was a difficult shot to capture as it meant that Luke had to run to keep up with us as well as maintain the right camera height and angle.

  We chose to carry the last shot on with the three characters running around the structure in the centre of the square. We had two panning shots of this scene, on from the left side of the structure and another from the right. Since this shot would be directly carrying on from the feet running shot, we decided to use a low angle shot (as seen below) for continuity which rises up slowly to a normal angle.

  The two shots below are of the right side of the structure, this time from a normal angle.

 The last shot we did for that day was in Covent Garden; we wanted to make use of the attractive surroundings as well as the busy area (which would make the video look more realistic and give the characters the opportunity to dodge in-between people. We used a long panning shot which zooms out to capture the three characters bursting out amongst the crowd. This, again, took a long time to film, taking up around 7 takes as we waited for suitable opening amongst the public.