Production Day 1 - Exterior Establishing Shots

We started off our first filming day by filming all of our exterior establishing shots. These shots included the sign which will be edited to say ‘Spy School’, the building shots, the low angle tracking shot of the feet moving, the CCTV shots high and low angle of the hero walking to his lesson and the extreme close-up of the ID card which we will use as the practical title. We also filmed some extra shots of the hero walking so we can edit in some extra footage in case our opening isn’t long enough, and a mid-shot tracking shot of the heroes head as he is walking. Other establishing shots that we filmed included students walking around college which will act as students walking around ‘Spy School’ and an establishing panning shot in the wooded area of the school which we will use as a background to some more opening titles for our children’s film opening.

Problems  –

The first problem that we came across was that our original balcony location for the high angle CCTV shot was out of bounds, so we had to hunt for a different location to get the high angle shots needed. Another problem that occurred when filming which was waiting for students in our school to walk out of our shots, there was nothing we could do to stop this from happening, only to just wait or to use them as extras in our ‘Spy School’. Another problem was with the equipment that we were using, this was because the DSLR cameras that we were using where to heavy for the tripods that we were using. The tripod bolt was also too small for the cameras, so this made the cameras shake about quite a lot during filming.

What went well  -

Some things that we feel went well on the first day of filming included the low angle tracking shot. The final shot was better than we had imagined when story-boarding because it was smooth and almost looked professional. Also we managed to complete all the storyboarded shots, and film some extra shots as backups in case we needed them when editing, all before the hour and a half lesson time was up. We then had time to watch through what we had filmed, delete what we didn’t need, and import everything to our group folder on the computer. 

Roles on set - Day 1 -


Cinematography / DOP - Alex, Brad and Jack
Acting - Elliot
Extras - Alex and Jack