Essex road south ( FILMING DAY 1 )

Our shooting at Essex road south was an enjoyable shooting as we spent 3 hour shooting few scenes more than once.One of the challenge that we had to face was the fact that even though we went to shoot at 1:50 there was still traffic( usually between 1;30 to 3:40pm
 the road is clear). This affected our shooting because in one of the scene precious (actor) had to cross the road and we kept 
 waiting
 for the road to be clear. 

But surprisingly we managed to perfect the scene of precious crossing the road as when sammah was filming I had to keep moving the camera (tilt) in left and right showing her crossing the road and going to the bus stop.  

 The first few scenes were shooted by sammah and the rest were shooted by me. In here you can see that I had to move with the camera holding it steady when precious was walking since we wanted to show her walking towards the bus stop but we preferred to imply in a different way rather than showing from the front of  her face. 

This is the road that precious had to cross . Due to the noise level created by the cars and the buses it was bit difficult  for precious to hear us for example during the 1st shoot I told precious to wait for the signal of my finger to look left and right before crossing however she couldn't hear me due to the noise levels. Plus when we were shooting we told her to wait for 2 seconds when she came to the middle of the road to cross  and she crossed the road without our signal. 

This road is 3 minute away from the Essex road south bus stop and in my RecessI wrote about how and why we wanted to start the first scene
 from this place but when we looked at our storyboard and the amount of time we portrayed within the story  we realised it would be impossible for us to film and  precious walking to the bus stop within 5 minute and miss the bus at 4 min. So we changed our mind started from the one in above location. In addition crossing this road could have been danger for precious as cars were coming from  both of the sides and it would be difficult for her to cross the road. 

  

 It took us 15 minute to walk from leyton sixth form college to the bus stop and even though we found a suitable place to make precious cross the road we had to be careful with our equipment as we also even had to cross so many roads which was really annoying and frustrating. 

When I was shooting I kept checking after my shoot whether I left out anything or did any mistake. This was my first time shooting because I never liked being the camera operator but Sammah helped me a lot to in learning how to use the camera and how to keep the focus without zooming in and out when it comes to close up shoot. 

The other half of the shooting was done by Sammah. Me and Sammah divided some of the scenes.

For few of the scenes we had to repeat more than once such as the scene of Precious walking towards the bus stop.

In here sammah had to shoot 3 times due to the cars crossing the road.

After each shot we called Precious to check it with us i.e whether is there anything she doesn't like about the scenes.

Me and Sammah kept checking all the scenes more than 5 times as we wanted to make it perfect. Overall our first shooting day was successful even though there were little problems relating to traffics and cars.