Saturday 5th November - SUCCESS!!!
First half of filming
Up at 7:00am and already on our way to Arron’s house (cast member) to pick him up and one of the bikes we are going to use in our film trailer. The first problem we had was trying to fit the mountain into Tom's boot. We had no roof rack or trailer for the back of the car. After pulling two seats down and taking the front wheel off the bike we managed to fit the bike in the car.
On arrival Isaac and his brother Arty (also a cast member) had started to set up the equipment. We had a short briefing with the cast so they knew exactly what we wanted and how. With all three of the cast members (Arron, Arty and Adam) and filming crew (Me, Tom and Isaac) we were able to start filming straight away. I was in-charge of taking pictures of us filming and also to help direct.
We all had a go at filming on the cameras, taking pictures holding the boom pole and directing the actors. We soon realised that filming all of our shots was going to take much longer then we expected. Our first shot which was simply the three of them getting out of the car in their bike clothing and putting on their helmets. This proved trickier then we thought it would. We didn’t notice the boom pole or cameras reflection on the car door or the fact that they were getting out of the car at the same time and then all putting their helmets on in sync. We were trying to get the timing right without it looking staged.
The next shot was mainly done by one of the actors who had to place the camera on top of the car and then return to the group and pose huddle together as if they were waiting for a picture.
We are going to edit the end of this shot with a white fade out as if the flash of the camera went off and took a picture of them. This is then going to quickly edited together with the action shots of the three on their mountain bikes. Some of these shots were harder to get than others. It took two hours to get the first half of the footage we needed. Some of the best bike shots we captured were when they were riding down hill as they picked up some speed and flew past the camera.
We caught this from different angles, mainly low down on the ground, one facing towards them when they’re coming downhill and then one in the middle where there was a little bump in the road which allowed them to come of the road and do a little ‘jump’. The last shot for this section was one camera low down on the gravel facing away from them looking downhill just before the bump which caught them landing and then carrying on. All the shot from this section are going to be edited together quite fast to with some fast music to give it that really sporty/ action feel.
The last kind of action bike shot we did before our lunch break was the panorama shot of the cyclists down low. This is where our second hurdle happened. Isaac and Tom were taking one of the camera’s too the top of a hill across a small river so that they could film, Isaac and myself both had walky-talky’s so that we could communicate from far away so that I could signal the riders when they had set up the camera ready. The walky-talky’s were working at first but when we got to our locations the battery died on them so we had to result on waving and using big arm signals to communicate. The shot went well and they captured everything that we needed too. We decided to take a half hour lunch break and then carry on filming.
After Lunch
Isaac’s dad arrived for supervision on the mine filming. We took a few more shots of the riders on the bike. The next few shots were of them entering the mine without one of their friends to go and hide from him. He then returns from what we made look like ‘going for a wee’ to find their bike helmets and bags laying outside the mine. He then starts to enter in their calling their names and entering cautiously. These shots were quite easy to take as he was quite nervous walking into the front of the mine anyway because there was freezing cold water on the floor and dripping through the stones inside.
We won’t need to really edit any off these shots to make it ‘eerie’ apart from a soundtrack which will be only music notes. Inside the mine we used the Go-Cam strapped to one of the actors chests at a time. We are hopefully going to put a green layer over these clips to make it appear as though it is in night vision. We had to use on of Tom’s lamping lights to light up the actors faces when they are walking in as it was far to dark to see anything in the first couple of meters inside. We didn't have to go any further than this as the mine blacks the light out completely.
Making a poster for our film 'Spence Level' is complicated as we have hundreds of photos of the scenery and actors but its hard to find one that is suitable for a poster. from our shooting day we have various photos of the landscape, evidence of our shooting and also some action shots of the actors. 
