Filming - Day Four

The final day of filming was shot on location at Coleg Morganwg and was simply two scenes of James giving his introduction and conclusion to what had been discussed before now. The filming went smooth and took well under an hour. After four days of shooting I had gathered about an hour of footage which would be needed to cut down to about 10 minutes. I can see me spending a lot of time editing and a lot of great footage being left out.

Filming - Day Three

When I originally set out this project in my mind, Day Three was the most important day of filming. Today I attended ACTS Community Church in Tylorstown. I had obtained permission a couple of weeks in advance to film the sermon and get interviews with various people at the church who I felt would add something to my film. I spent the whole morning there filming and the interviews I had shot were informative and I felt they would make my project more credible. I have to give thanks to those who gave up their free time to me, it was a great help.

Filming - Day Two

Day two consisted of filming at Oakdale Industrial Estate and Darren Park, both in Ferndale. This involved less travelling and more time to prepare and plan each shot. This only made me realise even more the importance of getting permission to film at locations well in advance of the day of the shoot. As the shots we got in Cardiff on day one could of easily been shot closer to home. This would of freed up even more time for prep and planning.

Today's footage was more of James talking to camera. The only additional prop was James's car, needed for  one scene to explain combustion. The icy conditions meant a new risk assessment of both areas had to be carried out before filming begun. The ground was treacherous underfoot but there were no serious mishaps. The filming went well and was all done by lunchtime, this extra half day of free time was used for planning day three.

Filming - Day One

Filming on day one was done on location at Cathays park in Cardiff and St Mary's Statue in Penrhys. My original intention to start the day was to get footage of James speaking inside The National Museum of Wales in Cardiff. However we were unable to get permission to film there. This became the theme of the day with various places I had planned on using becoming unavailable to us. On reflection, for my next project, I will plan ahead and make sure I have the various permissions for the locations I would like to shoot at. This will prevent any last minute re-writes and scrambling around to find alternative locations. The scenes planned for and filmed today were two scenes of James talking to camera on the subject.

Despite all the problems with not being allowed my original choices for locations, the first days filming can be seen as a success. James's professionalism allowed us to get the footage in few takes and this freed up a lot of time for us to get some additional footage that wasn't planned. This included footage of a busy Cardiff town centre, a city preacher giving a lecture and plenty of footage of James just walking various streets and bookstores. A lot of this footage may not be needed but I thought it may come in handy during the editing process, and as I have learned, you can never have too much footage.