Filming

Day 1

Filming for the journey project began on Monday 20th April due to problems with equipment booking before Easter. After having had to wait longer than we expected for our actor on the morning of the 20th we still managed to shoot all the sequences we had hoped to have finished by the end of Monday. Our main protagonist, played by Billy's friend Adam, turned up around 12 and we used Tom's room to shoot some internal shots for the opening sequence of the film. We then went to our next location, a phone box down the road from West Street and used a skateboard for some low tracking shots. Though slightly jolty we got the desired effect from this technique. We then went to a house with a red door that we had previously found and done a recce and test shoot on for the external shots of our protagonist's house. We then went straight to Adam's house and shot internal shots for the end of the film. We shot in this order so that we could have most of Adam's parts in the can by the end of the first filming day and also because of the location of the houses, we ended up going in a circle which we found to be the most time efficient way of doing things.

Day 2

Day 2 was slightly less successful. It took us longer than we had anticipated to film some external panning shots. This was partly due to lack of planning for the particular sequence but also had to do with weather continuity. Relatively speaking we were blessed with consistent weather for all 4 filming days but Tuesday afternoon caused some problems as it became overcast. Nevertheless, we filmed a few tracking shots with one of our female actors and used a bike frame to attach the camera for another low track

Day 3

This was another successful day. For a shot in which we wanted Jeremy cycling, we knew we wanted to see his head and the handlebars from in front. For this shot we attached the camera to a flat surface on the back of a second bicycle, tilted it upward, facing backwards and got Billy to ride in front of Jeremy down a straight road. We did several takes of this but we were really proud of the end result. We then travelled to a road near the boardwalk to do another tracking shot of our actor Tom being a runner. We sat Sarah in a shopping trolley with the camera which was a surprisingly stable and good quality shot in the end.

Day 4

We encountered a few problems on Day 4 but still managed to wrap filming by the afternoon slightly ahead of schedule. Due to one of our actors being late again we set up the camera on location around 12pm and started filming around 1.30pm. This was a difficult sequence to plan as it involved one actor getting off a bus, a pan POV shot and then a well co-ordinated cross over where a cyclist cuts round our actors as he gets off the bus. As we had to rely on the bus for perfect timing this was a difficult shot to get under pressure but we seemed to manage it well in one take.
The last sequence we had to get in the can was some internal shots of Adam and our other actor, Rob on board a bus, though we tried we were denied permission by the driver so we quickly re-wrote the scene and improvised a new scene at a bus stop in its place which we're relatively pleased with.

Notes

Overall, though there were problems with punctuality, I feel that filming went well, especially as we stayed on schedule throughout. I would say that this is down to careful planning of a shot list and filming schedule in accordance with actor availability and convenience of location. It turns out that in post-production we have had some issues with the quality of some of the footage and length of the final film, but we've managed to book out equipment to re-shoot some sequences this weekend (1st-4th May)