Filming Day 1

Me and my group had organised to use a year 7 class for our army of children for an hours work. This was successful for the amount of filming we needed them for but felt like a rush as we were non stop working. We firstly needed them to understand that this was our coursework and any misbehaving would waste precious time and wouldn't be fair on us. We also had our teacher there for supervision so all children would be under control. Saying this when we started the shooting we noticed that they were all well behaved and we had no trouble at all.

We then had to discuss about the main part which was a young boy who stood out to us as a rebel. In the end we picked a young boy with a moheekan as a hair style and we felt that this boy fitted the part without even trying. We therefore presented him with the gold mask and everyone else with the silver mask.

Our first shots were of all the children marching down main street. We got different shots and angles of this and they did this very well by all using the same feet and all moving at the same time. It really began to look like an army of school kids which was our main aim. Whilst doing the marching shots we discovered that we didn't have the white shoes needed for the rebel, therefore we left this and concentrated on all the children's feet marching and did good shots of them turning at the same time which looked effective. Another reason why we felt that the white shoes could be left out was because we believed that the shot where the rebel leans out of the line is an effective one and we felt that this would be the first time we notice the boy and the most powerful shot.

One thing me and my group worried about was if we had enough footage for us to use of them marching but as we only had half an hour left to do the classroom scene we needed to move on. We decided to book the class to do any more filming if it was needed.

We then took them upstairs to do the classroom scene where the rebel notices that all the children are writing the same then he goes over the top, for example we made him scribble over his writing, stand up, push his chair over and storm out. This worked well as all the children still wearing the masks were all writing the same thing at the same time. This was 'All work and no play makes John a dull boy' over and over again. They also co operated while we concentrated on the rebels shots of him storming out.

We then realised that we needed the children to shoot the escape scene for the end of the video, but had little time for us to actually do this, therefore we changed the story slightly - we thought the rebel could get into the office and use the tannoy, this way we could film the rest of the class still in the classroom look up as if they hear the tannoy and then all of a sudden run out. We also thought this would be effective to use subtitles to show the viewers what the rebel was saying to the rest of the school.

With minutes left of filming we took effective shots of all the children in the corridor all cheering and messing about with their masks whilst the rebel stood still staring at the camera whilst holding the mask. This shot worked incredibly well as we got different types of shots, from extreme close ups to mid shots. It showed that the rebel had got the rest of the students on his side and he was the leader of the alliance. We will definitely use them shots in the video, even if it means changing the ending slightly.

After the children went back to their class we had another hour to shoot our CCTV footage around school. We got shots of corridors with no one in them. We also wanted to make sure that no windows were visible so none of the outside world was shown. We also got a shot of a corridor where a door is just left swinging, this showed that the school was empty and possibly deserted. This looks like a good start to the video as it fits with the beginning music but once the singing and heavy music begins is when we see the children beginning to march.

Our next filming day we will need our lead boy to do the toilet scene and the escape scene. This should only take about two hours, but we need to organise getting the lead out of his lesson or organise a time after school.