Our first day of filming

We finished our first day of filming and managed to get all the shots in we had hoped to get. The location we chose was my house basically as it was our only option that offered a kitchen that backed onto another room. Obviously working with no real budget we had to work with the best options we had and this stood out far more than any other choice we had. This large space allowed for a bigger variety of shots and meant the track we wanted to use for one of the shots could be done.

The use of the kitchen leading onto the living room I think proved effective in establishing the relationship between tom and Anna, as tom is in the kitchen doing the work in making the sandwich, and Anna in the living room is casually watching TV, not bothering to make herself food but leaving it to her partner. This showed the relationship contrast we wanted, and makes Anna appear the dominant one in the relationship.

The major problem we faced was that there was no lighting kit as we were unable to book one due to all the schools kits being taken. Having no lighting kit meant that Yussra had to fashion lighting for us using lamps we had stashed around my house, tracing paper to dim it so there would be little shadow, and hair clips and tape to hold it together. This managed to work, just, but it clearly would have been a major advantage to us if we had a real lighting kit.

Another problem we faced was the scene where we wanted to Anna to eat the sandwich tom had made and drinks the beer in a disgusting brutish way as possible. It needed essentially to be done in one take as once the sandwich had a bit taken out of it continuity was lost as when it was bought to her it was whole. It initially took a long time to get and caused a lot of havoc as we didn’t feel we got the desired effect we wanted at first, however eventually we got the shot.

Anna and tom’s commitment to our filming was shown by the slapping scene. We had asked Anna to fake the slap but neither seemed bothered about making it real for authenticity in that scene. It was pleasing to see toms commitment to the filming that would ‘take one for the team’ in order to help establish the dominance Anna has over him in the video.

Overall a great success and we are pleased with how the filming went. Look forward to more filming in the coming days!

George