FILMING IN WOODS

We were looking forward to filming in the woods as the 1st shoot was really funny. We got all of the equipment ready and got our make-up and outfits on. We decided to do the scenes first which required help with lighting so went to fetch my niece, Leah. Nic brought torches because we thought we had a generator at uni plug the big lamps into but Nick said we don't. We could've hired one but we only found out Tues (we filmed Tues eve) so didn't have time. We changed the gain on the camera, the white balance and the shutter speed, so that we would get the most light coming through when filming in the dark.

So, we arrived at the woods, it was so dark, we found the shed where we were going to film by and set our equipment down. It was freezing!!! I wore heels too, which were really hard to dance in on squelchy, muddy leaves. We did the 1st verse dance sequence to start. We placed a few toadstools nearby and Leah held a torch on each of us so we were lit. We did the dance with the cd and went to do it again but the cd player decided it didn't want to work anymore. We tried different things but it wasn't reading the disc...this was really annoying because it was necessary for the timing of our dance and singing. We just had to get on with it, we did a lot of versions and moved camera angles so we had plenty of variation for editing. We then went on to filming the elevation scene. We crouched down and had the cam set low, we then slowly stood up so hopefully it will look like we are floating up. We then set up near a fence so we could sit on to it then jump off, we can then reverse it to get the effect of being lifted off the floor. We will cut these together to give the illusion of hovering! Unfortunately, when watching the rushes we noticed the shadow of the camera on Nic's body so that scene will have to be done again. We then did the landing, where we just jumped into view, Nic jumped off the fence a few times but it was icy and there was no way i could do that with heels on. We went straight into the dervishes scene. This was hard to do on uneven ground in heels and bright light. We had an audience at this point and loads of dogs roaming around. We did the footsteps next and had to guess at the tempo of the beat as our cd player had betrayed us. We did a lot of takes so surely there will be one in time. Next we filmed us coming down the path and dancing around the trees in the woods. We took Leah back and had a cup of tea to warm up, we couldn't feel our toes, lips or hands, or see a damn thing!

Round 2. We set up by a tree to do scenes 4,5,6,7,8,9 and 10. These were pretty good, timing didn't really matter on these. We had some lights in the background that Nic was trying to avoid but when looking through the camera i thought they looked good, like the Spinster's house in the woods. The torches were not ideal, you can see the rings in some shots but we didn't have any other option so perhaps we can make it better in post-production.

We went back to the car and got out of our set clothes into something warmer. The last scene was the animation of the clothes (we still have to do scene 1 but it was way too dark so i will go back just before dark one day, to film the lake, woods, etc.

Nic operated the camera on the tripod and i moved the clothes and held the torches. This didn't take long at all. Everything for the night was over. What a horrific experience that was!

We filmed mostly on the tripod but there were a few hand held shots, which seem to have come out well. I am now waiting for Nick to install the latest version of final cut because the computer is not letting me log and capture.