DIGITAL NEWS: Shoot Day 2

Today was our second and final shoot day. The locations were in Gravesend at Alex's house and Alex's sisters house. We had to pop out for ingredients for the fry-up so we started filming later than we expected. We started by setting up at Alex's sisters house for the bar scene and brought our actor, Aidan, along to be the person who gets 'drunk' and has to try our hangover cure myths. Due to ethical reasons Aidan didn't actually get drunk for us, but pretended.

We started with Jason presenting our hangover cure idea and the science behind hangovers. We used a lot of scientific words so we thought it will be best to put writing on the screen when we edit this scene. We wanted to create a visual metaphor when we were explaining about the science behind the hangover and what they do to the body so we used shot glasses and different coloured M&Ms for the different chemical processes, and a margarita glass with more M&Ms for the body, and Jason poured in what goes into the body while he was explaining it. We all thought this looked really good and explained it clearly, I definitely wouldn't have understood all the different things that happen to the body if we didn't use the props.

Once we had mastered the visual metaphor we went onto getting a sequence of Aidan at the bar drinking beer and then water, as one of our hangover cures is that if you drink a glass of water after every alcoholic drink, then you're not supposed to get a hangover, because you're keeping hydrated throughout the night. Alex, Katie and myself all took turns on being on the camera for these scenes.

While the others were finishing off that sequence, I started designing the wall for our studio presentation with the posters Katie and myself made. Instead of using a green screen we thought it would be best to create our own background. Alex thought having a backdrop of different posters about myths/aliens/conspiracy/fact or false etc. would look good and he could be a conspiracy theorist who has made the posters to what he's thinking/planning and then ends up tearing the posters down. We also thought it would give a good depth to the shot instead of the green screen.

We completed the studio scene and did the trailer here too. Alex simply improvised for around 5 minutes and in the end tore down the posters behind him and went a little crazy. In post-production we will take clips from this part for our trailer.












This then ended our time at Alex's sisters house and we went to Alex's house for the rest of the hangover cure scenes. Unfortunately, I had to leave for work so the others finished off the rest. From what I heard back they had a really good filming session. They used Aidan and put some hangover cures to the test. Aidan had to eat a fry up for us, have a lemon rubbed on his armpit and drink a lot of water. We couldn't have done this without Aidan, his character was perfect for our programme and some of his reactions are priceless.

This shoot day went really well. We were impressed that we got finished within two days which gave us more time to start and refine the edit. The whole visual metaphor idea went really well. It does make it easier to understand with the scientific words and will work well with our young audience. We got all the shots we wanted by following the shooting script and shot list. We used Katie's soft box lights which helped give the shots a better look. On the camera it was slightly yellow from the beige walls even after correcting the white balance, so the lights helped whiten the background. They also used the lights in the shots at Alex's house with Aidan's interviews and results.

However, we could have managed our time better and brought the ingredients before the filming day. This was something that didn't occur to any of us that we would spent ages shopping for the bits. When we thought we had finished the studio scene, we played it back and couldn't hear anything. This was because the microphone wasn't plugged in properly, when it was for the previous shots. We aren't sure how this happened but we have learnt from it and will make sure we check everything is plugged in more often during a shoot.