Author Movement - Reflection on the filming process

Our main problem was time. We were fairly ambitious with the size of our set, as we wanted our beings to feature in our film, and so the set had to be large enough to fit them in. We spent quite a long time building and decorating our set, which meant that we didn't have as much time to film and edit as we would have liked. Filming took quite a long time because we wanted to capture a variety of shots to make our simple narrative more engaging. Everyone worked together really well during the filming, whether it was using the camera, being in a costume in the scene, setting up the scene or giving support with props etc. We managed to film a scene with everyone's beings in, despite one person being absent for the day. We achieved this by looking at which costumes could stand up unaided. Molly's costume stood up alone, and my costume eventually stood up after propping it up from the inside using cardboard tubes. This meant that everyone could be in the dancing scene, and I was able to film it. 

Another problem we had during filming was equipment. There was a shortage of lighting kits, but we used this to our advantage. We were able to set up the projector, and used some colourful pattern videos to project coloured, moving lights onto our set. This was a really useful thing because it helped us to portray the party atmosphere. Another problem we had was with the camera battery. We kept having to stop filming to charge the battery. However, we made use of this time by planning and setting up the next scenes, and transferring our footage onto the computer. 

We didn't have much time at all to edit, as the setting up and filming took a long time. It was also difficult because all of our footage was on one laptop, and so we couldn't go home and each do a bit of editing overnight. We solved this by coming in a bit earlier than usual so that we could edit. The editing process was definitely the most stressful part of the process due to the time we had. I think we made the mistake of not watching our film all the way through enough times. Due to the tight time frame, we didn't have enough opportunities to step back and reflect on our film. This meant that we didn't get the pacing of the film right, which we are a bit disappointed about. However, this has made us realise the importance of leaving enough time to step back during the editing process. I will definitely do this in future projects.