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Filming Process

As a group we decided to create a soap opera trailer for our project. We then had to decide what our soap opera would be based around and what was the unique selling factor for it. We unanimously decided that we would create a soap revolving around a football club and the surrounding areas. With a rough idea of how our soap would start we needed to find the football stadium we would film at. We got in contact with the general Manager at Staines town and he kindly agreed to let us come down and do a recce..

Group verdict

(Email from general manager Ken Williams with recce conformation)

Our Recce took place on a Friday night at the ground as we knew it would be relatively quiet, allowing us to recce properly without getting in the way or being interrupted. We were pleasantly surprised when we met Mr Williams as he informed us we would have practically restrictions on the area of the club we could film. Once we had been given the tour he allowed us to recce our area, after roughly forty five minutes we had finished our recce and reconvened with Ken who with thanked sincerely for allowing us to recce and thanked in advance for agreeing to let us film at the ground. He proceeded to give us extremely useful advice as to when to come back and film and the times that would be perfect for us to get the shots we wanted. We arranged with him when we were going to be coming back and after thanking him again went back to plan the shots, storyboard and script.

Recce

We were informed by the clubs general manager to arrive two hours prior to kick off to get some of the shots of player and the empty ground. This meant we were able to proficiently and methodically maximise our filming time, making sure we got all of the shots we need and extra shots just in case of any problems such as continuity errors. About Forty five minutes before the game we managed to get shots of the supporters, some of the people who work at the club and other filler shots just for safety. As we used myself, Staines town players already at the ground and establishing shots, we didn’t have the additional stress of arranging actors to be on location at correct time and date allowing us to shoot at the pace we needed meaning our footage wasn’t rushed.

Filming: Staines Town FC

After filming at the ground we needed to get some footage of locals from the older generation and young people. We went to the local post office which was in an ideal location beside the pub and a short walk from the ground. As we used Mark and Edgar as actors in this scene we didn’t have to worry about getting other actors to location on time. We managed to film some incredibly useful footage here, when we had reviewed footage we made our way to marks house to film his granddad. We again filmed some incredibly useful footage here, we made sure we thanked Marks granddad sincerely making sure he knew how appreciative we were for his role. Once we had filmed we were in a relaxed position where we could review footage. We luckily spotted two rather small errors in our filming and proceeded to re shoot these scenes. We felt that we had been quite successful shooting that day and knew we only had one more location to shoot at. We had to arrange actors for this scene so we would decided when we shot this scene at a later date when we had a clearer idea. Filming: Marks Granddads

and area surrounding the ground

We gathered our two female actors together, as they were at the same college as us and location was two hundred metres away from college getting the actress’ there wasn’t a problem and proceeded to Edgar's house on a Tuesday afternoon. This filming session was far less strenuous than the other two as we filmed from three different angels. Our actresses were drama students which made our footage feel a lot more professional. Once we had got over the initial giggling due to the context of what we were filming we managed to get the shots we needed within twenty five minutes. Once we reviewed the footage and we were happy we returned to college to upload our footage to the computers.

Filming: Edgars house (Bedroom Scene)

One final problem we found when reviewing footage with Mr Allison was that we needed to shoot the bedroom scene again but from a different position. He explained to us in class how we could do that without having to gather the actors back. Once he had explained this to us we took the equipment we needed out at the beginning of lunch and re shot it in the space of fifteen minutes, we proceeded to return to college get the footage uploaded to our edit and carried on with our school day avoiding any real problems.

Re Shoot

(Angle we re shot from for continuity purposes)