Production: I See Her Online, All The Time/ My Skin Is Fire, It's So Desired (BBC)

The Intro Scene

The first day of production was the 29th April on a Saturday the shooting location as me and Rebecca had already agreed to see each other that day so we decided to take the opportunity to film the intro to the documentary. As previous posts have described the into is simple it's three shots all at different times with different lighting to signify the change in time. I decided to shoot in Rebecca's bedroom rather than mine because their room has a lot more things in terms of mis en scene and just would look more interesting to the audience as a whole. The first shot we took as soon as i got there as the natural lighting would be only available for a short time here is some footage of us from behind the scenes.

With these shots I tried tracking Rebecca's movements when coming in to the room and in different spots in the room as well as just standing still and waiting for them to come in into shot. we ended up shooting it 4 times in different ways. After shooting i reviewed the footage and regrettably all the shots are out of focus which made me panic a bit...well a lot but some of the footage for the first scene and second scene are usable and aren't that bad  but the third scenes footage is salvageable as you can barely see Rebecca's head and just looks like a mess so I'd prefer to just re-shoot the whole thing. Below is an example of some of the third scene footage that i am not a fan of. 

But unfortunately we would not meet at that shooting location again until after the deadline for the project therefore I will make the most of the footage I have and try to improve it in the post production.

The Interviews

The second official day of production was on the 2nd of may which was the first day back after the bank holiday. The shooting location of the studio was easily accessible for all involved and i had the interviewees help me with setting up the lighting and tripods. The interview sections of the documentaries are imperative to stay with the codes and conventions of a conventional documentary. I did implement my plan to use two cameras but ultimately there were problems with one of the SD cards and the footage it ended up capturing i didn't like very much so decided to scrap thew idea but I'm glad i tried it regardless. Here is a photo and some testing footage we took from behind the scenes 

You can hear even in this testing footage our struggles with the second camera as it sometimes just stop for no apparent reason and after a while we got sick of it and just got rid of the camera and decided to just stick to one camera at a side angle. Originally, my plan was just to have two interviews with Saul and Dan but we finished rather early and we had Leon in to help with technical problems and set ups so we decided to interview him as well just so there would be more options for footage. Also a decision that one of the cast members suggested to me was to help with audio by having the interviewees record a voice note on  my phone while answering questions. This not only helps with audio but with mis-en-scene as it kind of sells the idea that people are obsessed with phones as its in their hand in shot. For example here is a still shot form one of  takes from Saul's interview.

But in few days after recording the interviews something happend to the SD i had recorded the interviews on. The SD card had broken in my pocket which all the footage was lost of the interview which i was actually pretty devastated because I liked the answers I was given and the footage looked great. But i realised i could easily re shoot with everyone the next week as i had bought a new SD card to replace the old one and everyone had agreed that it wouldn't be a problem so the re shooting day would be scheduled for the 9th of May.

Our Second Try with the Interviews went pretty smoothly as we had already gone through it once before. We set everything back up the same way and did not try to do the previous experiment Again as we were working with one less SD card this time around. Both Saul and Dan gave great interviews and their answers were almost exactly the same which was great because it felt like I had successfully brought back the lost footage. Below are some shots that Sean took from behind the scenes when we were filming.

We did have a little bit of a hiccup while recording though, as previously mentioned as part of the interview i gave Saul and Daniel my phone so they could use it as a microphone as well as just make them look like they couldn't not have a phone in their hand. to record the audio we used the Voice Memos app but as you can see in the photo below I had my airpod in my ear through out the whole of the interviews. This meant that the mic that the app was using to record with was coming from the airpod instead of the phone. You could hear me ask the question to Dan or Saul perfectly but once either of them started talking theres nothing but barely audible speaking. 

We only realised this as soon as we got finished recording for the day and I was panic mode I couldn't believe that now I have only half of what I lost back and now had to rely on camera that didn't have a mic plugged into it for audio. Leon helped me look over the footage to check if we'd have to re-shoot because of poor audio quality but it turned out the audio was sounded just fine and it was quite clear. So I was relieved to say the least and We had finished the recording for the Interviews. 

But I was wrong, very very wrong. once I had literally finished everything I needed to and was well within the post production stage I forgot my SD Card at college and forgot about it. once i came back the next day i looked in my wallet and there was no SD card so I checked the computer I was working on, no SD card. The point is my SD card had gone missing...Again. Which meant all the footage except for the Intro Scene Because I had edited that on its own and then exported it was gone and had to be reshot. I'm not going to lie I was very close to almost giving up but i still had just enough time to the deadline so I had to suck it up and buy a new SD card and reschedule and this time download the footage to one drive as soon as its recorded. 

the reshooting day was the 26th of May This time reshooting for the third time was massively different because I was unable to use the studio as I have done the two previous times as it was in use by another person at the time. I really did not want to reschedule so as I was already up against it time wise and it was right before the half term so it would be a week until the cast would meet up again. To combat this problem, I had to find another shooting location quickly in the college so we used a little side room near the music class room. 

Because of the cramped space we couldn't really use tripods or use the lighting stands. So to keep the camera steady I used a slider because of its size. We also just shortened the amount of questions to just 4 cause the script had already been written at this point so we just used the questions that were 100% needed to save time. It was just me, Daniel and Saul this time as not much was needed to be set up and we couldn't really fit anyone else in that room. after recording the first thing I did was download all the footage so I couldn't lose them and there was no way we would have to reshoot.

At the end of all that, the final footage came out pretty good considering the circumstances there were a lot of setbacks but I dealt with them well and i now know how to be more careful after recording.

The Presenter Scenes

The Third day of Production was on the 17th of May. The shooting location for these scenes like the location for the interviews is right next to our class room in college so it was easily accessible for all involved. the people with my on this day were Leon Saul and Will. We made sure that the door was locked so we wouldn't be disturbed by anyone coming in and out of the classroom and began to set up the tripod and camera. After making sure that there was enough battery was in the camera and there were no issues with the SD Card, we tried to centre the chair that i would be sitting in for the next few hours at the centre of the frame using the rule of third lines that were displayed on the cameras screen. Here is a picture of this process. 

As you can see in the photo Saul is showing me something on his phone. what he is showing me is the script as one of his jobs for today was along with being a behind the scenes camera man but also helping me with the script in terms of memorising lines from it. He was a real help because i stammered over my words alot and used up alot of storage on the SD card but to solve this i would have Leon delete the takes where we didn't get anywhere from the camera itself instead of waiting until post production.

Unfortunately, This footage was all lost when i lost my SD card along with the interviews. So we would all have to reshoot the scene later on on the 8th of June 

The Re-shooting of the footage went really well we did the same kind of pre recording prep checking everything was working correctly and in order as well as centred in the frame. Saul continued his role helping me out with the script off camera while Leon manned the main camera while Will was taking photos of us. Even if there were few disruptions.

My Skin Is Fire, Its So Desired/Black and White Scenes

The 1st day of production for this side project was on the 7th of May this was the same day as my sisters birthday so we had a bit of time constraints as we could only shoot in the morning but because of it being a poetic documentary it wouldn't take as long to film and not as much editing would be needed so overall the shooting only took 30 minutes to do. the camera would be setup in a stationary position and would not move through out the documentary to show that character in on screen is stuck in their ways. this meant that my Dad, Adam Baxter, would not be able to record handheld as it would be shaky but we used my phone stand as a makeshift tripod and it worked really well in the end 

Also I made the conscious decision to wear Nike and The North Face when going to record as its meant to be a statement on consumerism and how that is accelerated by the internet and through phones. The biggest part of the characters outfit is the shoes which are Air Jordan which are highly sought after products and are a symbol of consumerism. After testing out the setup and seeing that the weather was suitable to record in at home we made our way over to the shooting location. the woods that we shot in was just a small walk away from our house so with the tripod and camera we walked over

Luckily, the location was unpopulated as I did have worries that some people may be there as it is a frequent spot for fires. There had clearly been someone there before us as there were remnants of a fire which really helped with the setting and the production overall. Before we did anything we looked around or materials like twigs or leafs so that i can just walk off screen during recording and not waste time on the recording. We also tested the camera out again to make sure it was in focus and had enough charge in the battery for the production. Adam also recommended making sure that the wood be in the centre of the camera to adhere to the rule of thirds which was actually a big part in the footage looking better. 

My dad had brought some paper with him as that would add to the realism as it would feel like the fire if we were to set it alight would actually burn obviously this still quite dangerous so the fire will be added in post production to stop any harm coming to me or Adam. Unfortunately though i would still get things wrong in the takes in terms of constructing the fire so he would correct me and we would take the shot again. here is an example of my dad making sure the Fire Is made correctly 

We tried the first shot multiple times as we wanted to try it with there being an extreme close up of the fire and a gradual wide shot of the whole area as i walk into shot. we also just shot it without any zoom ins as just a stationary wide establishing shot which was the original idea but while just recording plain footage so i could make the video longer we discussed what we could experiment with in that first shot.

 

After Filming I checked the footage back home to make sure that it was all in focus and was good enough to use. The filming was a success and we had very few problems.

This Footage was all lost once I had lost the SD card so despite me being happy with the footage we had to reshoot on the 4th of June