Day 1 of filming: (Test shots)

For our first day of filming we wanted to get some test shots which will help us in the future. The aim of this was to familiarise ourselves with the camera work and cinematic techniques. We had aimed to go to two different locations London Bridge and Canary Wharf. Establishing and environmental shots was our focus and as we didn’t have any specific characters in mind this is what was easiest for us to do.

London Bridge was our first location and we had set up our first point of filming on the London Bridge get some establishing shots of Tower Bridge, The Gherkin, neighbouring buildings and boats on the river. Establishing shots were very important as they would not only set the scene for your audience but depending on what location you had shot we could give of a wide range of atmospheres and effects on the audience. Whilst on the bridge we were able to get all of the shots we wanted it was just quite difficult as there were so many tourists on the bridge. We started filming at around mid- day which may have been the reason as to why the bridge was so busy. In the future we should probably film slightly earlier to avoid rush hour. Below are some images of me and my group filming on the London Bridge.

Are second location was Canary Wharf which was allocation we had used last year and we had really liked it. The main reason for this location was the very  tall skyscraper buildings which reminded us of money and business. We were able to get a wide range of establishing shots but we also wanted to try to get some shots of character so one person in my group wanted to be that character. We had filmed some very simple shots of him walking around sitting on a chair and this was good practise for us as we had taken a wide variety of shots. Although Canary Wharf is usually very busy we had started filming there in the early evening so there were far less people around whilst we filmed. Previously we had filmed in Canary Wharf and there were a lot of people who looked into the camera constantly and ruined our footage so we were a bit optimistic about filming there again, but there were not that many people and were able to film very easily.

Below is a video of some of the test shots we had taken. We will not be using these shots in our final teaser trailer so this was good for us to familiarise ourselves with the camera and the types of shots we can use for our final teaser trailer.