Filming Evaluation- London

Filming Evaluation
London

Shots completed

We chose to complete the other half of the park scenes in St. James park, although this was not the ideal realistic location it was busy and had the families that we needed in the background to make the scene effective. We filmed the scenes at an angle so that we didn’t have the wealthier part of London visible to the camera, we also chose to the angles as they would not focus on a civilian’s face, this helped us avoid offending the other people in the park.

We also completed the walking scenes in London as the streets were busier so we could capture a better ambience. We did these scenes in Brixton and Hyde Park (Winter Wonderland), we chose these locations as they were densely populated whilst we were filming, this gave more thought to her being alone but surrounded by people.

Whilst we were in Brixton we decided to use a tall arch to film some scenes, these included a long shot of the character in an alcove next to a large dumpster. This was reflective as the area was sheltered and ideal for a homeless person but it was so close to something unpleasant but choice is not available to some people.

Using the same arch as the street scenes were filmed, we filmed the scene where the character knocks into a civilian who looks down on her and calls her ‘scum’ there was some graffiti in the small side road and it was next to a busier road that had several people walking past it.

As we needed to use the subway to get back to the train station we did an unplanned shot in the subway and on the train, there were possible as the train and stop were basically empty, these scenes were effective and are commonly seen in movie scenes with homeless people present. They also held a different tone as they weren’t planned so we improvised the angles and the positions of the character and the timings were also unknown.

Pros
Filming in London gave us a lot more flexibility and options as to locations. It also gave the illusion of a busy location as even when there were few people the road traffic was loud enough to signify any presence with the loss of foot traffic. London also gave us the rougher graffiti covered areas that Maidstone didn’t have. Filming in Brixton was useful as it gave us a densely-populated area that was busy but not overly so meaning that we could get more shots from a distance and a time lapse shot could be completed without a chance of offending everyone.

Cons

Issues with filming in London were that as it was more densely populated and due to the time of year it was that we filmed we found that there were a lot more people in the areas we wished to film, this caused issues as we had a higher chance of offending people. Another issue was with the parks that we came across as only the ones in the nicer areas had families present, this meant we had to find angles that didn’t give away the location and still keep the other people present in the park anonymous. London also meant that we had to pay more for travel and essentials through the day and it took longer between shots as we had a longer distance to travel. We were originally delayed as our train was seven minutes late but this was not an issue in the long run.

Evaluation

Altogether we had a successful day, although we did not have time to find a public toilet to re do the toilets shots that we needed to do there was no other shot we did not complete. Although it was harder to film in London due to the crowds it had better location that we could film in giving us a larger range to choose from. Although we did come across issues of trying to film without offending people we also managed to avoid any confrontation with anyone that may have felt as though our filming was inappropriate.