Filming: Narrative shots - Jack's house

This was done after school, and we planned to finish it all in one session. The shots we filmed was the male protagonist, "waking up at twelve in his clothes again" and the female lead (Male's best friend) storming into his room, telling him to get his life together. The scenes to be shot outside Jack's house would be a continuation of their argument indoors, but also shows the male character with a regretful expression, presenting the lyrics "How come it ended up like this?". The shots taken from outside will also show continuity as there will be later scenes of the female character walking home.

Mise-en-scene

First of all, we set out to make Jack's living room like it was a bachelor pad, as opposed to a family living room. This meant removing the homely cushions and family photos etc. We scattered rubbish from the recycle bins, threw a blanket over the sofa, and left open DVD covers and beer ans as if the character had a night of binge drinking. As there is a reference to drugs in the song, we filled a sandwich bag with flower and tied it up to look like a bag of cocaine or some other drug. A laptop was also put on the sofa, so whilst filming we could play the original Feeder music video, as a fan tribute and textual reference. We also made note of what Jack was wearing, so if we ever needed to film any shots again, we could keep continuity.

For filming outside Jack's house, there was nothing we could actually do in terms of mise-en-scene, besides making sure not to film number plates and houses in detail.

Lighting

It was convenient that by the time we were adjusting the lighting, it was afternoon and the sun happened to shine right into the living room. The stretched shadows gave the "waking up late" feeling we needed, however, after some practice takes we realised this wasn't necessarily a good thing. With our main light source behind the character, Jack's face was shadowed, so on screen the lighting was very dim. Therefore, we played around with the gradients and dark/light modes on the camera and finally set it so that anything we filmed would look lighter on screen. For close-ups, we had someone crouching down out of frame, and illuminating the character 's face. (However this was impossible for shots with both me and Jack in, as we only had Jemma to do the filming).

When we were filming outside, the lighting was perfect and any adjustments could be made whilst editing.

Filming

For the narrative shots indoors, we started by filming an establishing shot of the Jack waking up. We did close ups, pans, and tilts of the beer cans, wine bottles, and drugs to put emphasis on his problem, and why the female character would be angry. It also sets the scene better. As mentioned before, there was some problems lighting these shots due to the position of the sun, but we worked around it.

Next was filming the shots of the female character (me!) entering the room, and arguing with the male character. We had cues for when to enter the room, and cue-places (marked by tape) for where we should stand, because in some shots I would walk out of frame, or too far forwards. It was fun filming the scene where me and Jack argue, because we didn't have a script we had to ad-lib our dialogue. There was little importance in what we had to say as the dialogue would be cut out, so we had fun shouting random and insulting stuff at each other to put across the correct emotions. Although, I still needed directing from Jemma who constantly told me to stop smiling whilst filming. This was another method for filming this shot efficiently - as mentioned, the sound would be cut out of this footage, so Jemma could tell as throughout filming what to do if we forgot, therefore allowing our time filming to be used the quickest and most efficient way.

When filming outside, there were times we had to re-take the same shot due to a passing car or person. This delayed our filming time, and by then it was all the more important to get it done because the sun was setting. We also had to make sure we weren't shouting too loud as it disturb the neighbours (we did think of just lip-syncing the shouting, but it didn't look realistic so actually shouting and showing the motions worked better).

With this shot (above), where the female character walks away and Jack follows, the camera also follows from behind. We had to be careful in this because we (me and Jack) tended to walk too fast and we had to time it just right so the camera would be close enough to film the male character pulling the girl back at the shoulder. This shot was important, because it had to be steady enough for the audience to see what was happening, but also a little un-even to represent the discourse in friendship (i.e. the argument).

Throughout filming we made sure to always take at least three of each shot, and any extra shots that weren't planned on the storyboard, in case any were unsatisfactory, and so that there would always be a choice to see which clip fitted with the song.