Construction Post 3: Reflections on our main shoot

Notes we made for our next shoot

I feel that our main shoot went considerably more efficiently than our main shoot as we had identified the issues we had faced in our main shoot and were able to overcome most of these. For example, with the help of some fellow media students (also members of our TA), we were able to identify unnecessary shots and eliminate them from our shoot board, meaning we could shoot more efficiently. However, technical issues such as a loud buzzing noise coming from the headphones put our sound quality in jeopardy. Once this issue was overcome we continued to shoot with ease, although this did affect the sound qualities of some of our shots as we were not always able to pick up and eliminate background noise quickly.
The greatest issue that was uncovered during our main shoot was the lack of continuity in the final conflict scene of our sequence, which was pointed out to us by members of our TA. This was due to issues with the script and placement of the camera. Rather than placing the camera on different angles and instructing the actors to perform the whole sequence multiple times, we attempted to film small snippets of the dialogue whilst moving the camera between shots. This proved to be problematic as we were unable to create footage that appeared to flow seamlessly. It looked very jumpy and stilted, meaning that we could not use it in our final sequence. However, this turned out to be a positive for my group as we were able to fix these problems to create a sequence that seemed more organic. This was also aided by changing the script. Originally, there were sections of the script when the actors were able to add-lib, however this made editing more difficult. By changing our shooting choices an tweaking our script we were able to create a more continuous sequence that our focus group liked more. Overall, I think that our main shoot went well, if not for creating quality footage, but for showing us what we had to do in order to achieve what we had set out to do.