Prop Safety and Filming Issues

Prop Safety:


As a part of our filming, we decided that some of our props were going to be weapons such as guns and knives, but of course they were not going to be real. Even though the props were not real, we had to be aware of what peoples reactions would be if they were to see us with a black spray painted weapon such as a gun. As a part of the prop safety, we made sure that there was no-one in the area, or very little people so they did not see the props. For example, when we were filming in the dark, we made it hard for people around us to see the props and made sure we practice filmed when there was no one around, that is why we decided to go out late to practice our shots, just to be sure there was hardly any public around the area we were practising with the camera in.

Us as a group understood that it was not a great idea to bring out props that looked like real replica's of weapons from a distance as the public may have got the wrong impression, that is why we went out at specific times to make sure the amount of people in the area was minimal and luckily, only one or two people that walked by were not too bothered about what was going on as we made it clear by showing the camera most of the time and we made it look like we were having fun instead of being serious with the weapons just to be sure the public didn't get the wrong image of what was going on at the time.

Another part of prop safety was the fake knife that we were using. Even though it was plastic, it still had a pointy edge and it had to be cut down a bit so it wasn't as sharp. We did this to make sure that Lauren did not get hurt in the process when filming some of the shots and to ensure that if was safe enough to swing the object around without anyone getting hurt.

Filming Issues:


Before any of the real shooting happened for our opening sequence, we took out the camera for some practice too see if we could find any problems before the actual filming begun. There was quite a few issues that we had to deal with and plan before it was too late. Here is a list of the following issues that we came across when practice filming for our opening sequence:

• The camera's light was not bright enough to film with when the area that we were taking shots in got too dark.
• The battery for the camera ran out quick which can decrease the amount of time filming as we had to go home/back to school to recharge the battery on the camera.
• When zooming in and out with the camera, it sometimes didn't focus properly and become fuzzy and unclear to view.
• If it was windy, the camera would only pick up the wind sound instead of the sound of the characters footsteps or important noises.
• When it was day light time, there was more people than there was in the dark which sometimes made it a little hard to film, even though it wasn't in particular that hard as there not many people in the area.
• The tripod that we were using was sometimes not high enough so we sometimes had to hold it with our hands which made the camera shaky and unprofessional.
• Depending on where we wanted to take a shot, it was hard if we were filming in the night, due to the fact that there were shadows and you could sometimes see the shadow of the person that was filming the character acting.

As a part of the improvement for the issues, we try to adapt with the issues. As for the lighting problem, we set up a few torches so that place that we were filming in was a lot brighter than before so we could see the characters movement, instead of just pitch black darkness. If the tripod was not high enough, we would have used a box or something to lift the height of the tripod, just to make the shot look a lot better than before.

As a whole, I think that us a group didn't expect some of the difficulties that we were going to encounter and we think that we were not prepared for what was to come and if we were to take media next year for A2, we would have learnt from our mistakes and expect the worst and work from there.

~Posted by Daniel