Filming Days (1)

We successfully managed to plan every aspect of our production before we set off to meet our contributor, Eleanor, in Llanelli.

Yes, Llanelli is further along the M4 than I had presumed! We had planned to be there an hour early so that we could sip coffee in some greasy spoon in Llanelli and calm our nerves before acting the professionals in front of our contributor. This hour was quickly swallowed up as the M4 seemed never ending! Luckily we arrived there just in time and therefore came across prompt and perfectly professional! Phew!

Eleanor greeted us with a lovely smile and a cup of tea. She was clearly nervous and excited. We had a look through the rooms of her house to find the most suitable for the interview. Her front room had a lovely big bay window and so the light was beautiful and natural. Chris and Nathan set about setting up while I talked Eleanor through what we were going to do, how interviews were done and the fact that we would have to stock up on cutaways. She started to relax a lot and by the time we settled into the interview she was very natural.

We talked for a while and made sure that our questions were throughly covered. She was energetic and I really liked the way she answered. Particularly when she spoke about technical details. We had the optician interview where he was calm and used the correct terms and then in contrast you have Eleanor who talks about "zapping" the eye and "prodding"! This was something that I wanted to use to our full advantage in the edit as it make her seem very human, very like the audience.

During the interview Eleanor's son woke up and started to create small whirlwinds of noise around the house. He was quicly distracted with cartoons but there was a shift in Eleanors concentration as soon as he came downstairs. Luckily we had gathered the bulk of our interview and felt that the final points could be covered in the 2nd day of filming in Cardiff.

We then filmed some cutaways. I was keen to show that Eleanor led a life that paralled with so many others. A full time mum, part time teacher, comfortable lifestyle but not flash. Busy but not hectic. As I did some research in the early stages that showed that so many people thought tha laser surgery was only for the very rich still, as it is expensive and usually only for cosmetic reasons. I paralleled this with the amount of people who own excessivly large and beautifully highly defined televisions.

I always feel that it is important that the audience feels some kind of connection with the contributor, otherwise their words are simply that, just words. We need to feel some kind of interest in that person, some kind of connection so that we are absorbed in their story. I feel that this was achived in Eleanors interview and the following bout of cutaways.

In hindsight this was a very steep learning curve for us and although we had covered many issues in the lectures it was only when we were able to experice a shoot that we saw the importance of things.

A great example of this is cutaways. Holly had said again and again how important a full and weighty bank of cutaways was. We spent about half an hour collecting shots of Eleanor such as in the playroom with her son, infront of the telly, noddies and so on. Yet this was not enough, in the editing stages it would have been great to have a little more variation.

In discussion after the filming we realised that maybe some of these shots would have been useful:

Eleanor opening the door and greeting us
More angles when she was playing with her son
More angles when she was watching television
The classic making tea
Setting off to pick up the kids from school

So for next time we shall be much more aware of this. We worked really well as a team on the filming day, we knew our roles and were able to impact as little as possible on Eleanors day. I feel that this made her relax hugely as she didn't feel that we were imposing.

On the long drive home, yes I reitterate that the journey was longer than expected, we talked in length about how the day had gone. I think we were all very excited that we managed to pull it off!