Shooting diary

First day of filming- Sunday 29th January

On our first day of filming, we situated the cast and group to our location which was the home of follow partner Sam Tyler. We converted his dining room into a poker scene, and attempted to create the dark, gloomy atmosphere that we wanted by drawing the dark red curtains, so the room was slightly tinted, which helped to create a misty and smoky environment. We also bought green fabric from a local shop, which was placed over the table, to follow in a traditional poker table set, this helped to improve the verisimilitude. Also, in the corner of the set, we placed a selection of wine bottles, spirits and cigarettes, to once again create the typical assets that are apparent in a back room poker game. Therefore, mise en scene was an important factor in our film, in order to make it more realistic and believable.

Whilst filming the poker scene, which makes up the majority of our film, we encountered various logistical problems but it was successful overall. We had to keep in mind not breaking the 180 degree rule, maintain continuity and make sure the shots are well framed and level.

We had several technological problems with the microphones as they didn't appear to be recording sound at a high enough volume, so we had to use the cameras built in microphones however we have little dialogue as most of it is narration which we will record after we have uploaded the footage so it won't be as big a problem as it was last year. Some shots we wanted to attempt weren't possible such as the 360 panning shot of the poker players as the room wasn't large enough to manoeuvre the dolly around.

On the day we made some changes to the plot such as introducing a prior game to the focal poker hand to remove 2/5 of the poker players and giving the audience a chance to see all our characters playing and lowering the number of characters involved in the final hand to intensify the action.

Overall I think the filming was successful and as we filmed using two cameras we were able to gather just under an hour of footage which should hold us in good stead for editing