Practice Project- Filming

After planning for the project we finally hit the deadline for the filming day. We had 3 hours altogether to set up and film. As this was all in green screen we had to get a reasonably flat lighting over the green screen which proved a difficulty straight away as the table cast a shadow, therefore we used a dado light and aimed it at the bottom of the table, however this was a mistake stright away and this is one of the main changes I would have made if I could reshoot this practice project. I had never used green screen within a project before and this was a huge learning curve for me. We had a shot list ready to read off however had not tried out these shots in practice and therefore when it came to filming we were restricted by the amount of green screen as well as the amount of time we had to shoot takes, the consequences of not planning these shots resulted in us missing an entire shot out which meant that we struggled to make an edit with what we had. I was the producer in this piece and therefore was responsible for the organisation of this project. I must say that although we were fairly organised we still struggled to get all the shots done which could have been improved by such things as having a rehearsal before the day and get costumes ready before hand. This took up nearly an hour at the beginning of the 3 hours so we had even less time on shooting. Mark our actor also had to go through make up which took about 20 mins and then be tied up and ready for the prosthetic hand. I think we should have already organised ourselves so everything was ready for the shoot and the actors knew what they were doing as this would have made both the performance and the overall shoot run a lot smoother so I could have reviewed what we had at the end so mistakes like the missing shot wasn't made. However this was a practice project and was definitely a learning curve for me. I was able to learn a lot about the organisation of the project and the amout of planning needed behind it to make a successful shoot. Also I learnt a lot about green screen and the fact that flat lighting is needed that is all one colour and does not change anywhere like the Dedo light did. Next time I will make sure to spend more time on preaparing for flat lighting than rushing on the day of the shoot.