Nisserin Bessioua - UCA Television Production

In order to prepare for our reshoot of Scene 11 and Scene 17, I remade the blocking and wrote up a new shot list for these two scenes so that on the day, all crew members can see exactly what we are doing and by writing down all extra shots we need, this should ensure that we don't miss anything.  For the shot list I have written down the location, scene number, shot size and a short description of the action so that everyone can see exactly what we're doing and where each shot fits in the script. Along with this, I have also remade the blocking diagrams, including the new camera positions and some of the important camera angles we already have so the director and I can see exactly what we're filming and how it'll work with the footage we already have.  To go with these, I also exported the scenes we were re-filming and uploaded them to youtube so that throughout the day we could watch through the videos and check for anything that might be a continuity error ...

After having some tutorials it was clear to us that we would need to organise a reshoot as there were some extra shots that would really benefit the project and certain scenes where shots we have weren't working and if we had the option to redo then we should. This was decided before the Easter break which gave the producer some time to organise a reshoot over the holiday. It was finally decided on a few weeks later that this would take place on the 30th of April. iPad Inserts: There are a few moments were Annie is holding her iPad in her hands and taking pictures/videos in scenes. At this point, we can only see her doing this from a wide shot or a mid shot of her. It was decided that having close-ups of the iPad and being able to see exactly what she sees puts the audience more in her position and within the scene.  Scene 11: For the scene, our actors were facing away from the camera so we couldn't see their faces. Our plan is to reshoot this scene by filming thro...

Outside : For scene 2, 3 and 12, we were filming outside on the driveway of the house. On this shoot, I didn’t have any camera assistants or runners so I had a lot more to do than I did on previous shoot days when I had some people to help me. Initially I felt that I could cope with this as I had a plan for myself as to how I would do this in the most efficient and productive way. We did have a sound operator so that wasn’t something that I had to completely do.   I initially started the day by setting up my camera with all the correct settings so that I was ready to go as soon as the cast had arrived and got into costume. The weather on this day overcast and lightly raining so to prepare for this, I attached small plastic bags to the tripod legs and also covered the camera in a large plastic bag while it was not being used to keep it dry; it also put under the car boot to help keep everything dry and out of the bad weather.   We began filming wit...

Collection Equipment: The start of my day for this shoot was to collect all the equipment that had been booked out. This was a huge amount of stuff and took some time getting it all down to the studio, luckily I had the rest of the crew to help transport it. Whilst I was doing this and setting up the cameras and tripods, the director and producer were putting into position the props that were needed for the scene. Setting up: Once the cameras were on the tripods, each camera operator had previously been given the shoot pack for the day which contained the settings for the camera to make sure they matched. Whilst they were working on this, I began setting up the lights on the stands and placing them in the previously decided on positions. The test shoot that we did for this scene was immensely helpful as it made the set up so much quicker as we knew where everything needed to go. Once these were all plugged in, had the orange gels on them and the cameras we on, we began worki...

Due to us shooting our opening scene in studio 2 it was important that we test the scene with cameras and lights to make sure that we would be able to achieve what we wanted and for it to look believable and not let the scene down.  To start this we began with lighting which I initially thought would be our biggest challenge as the space we were filming in was quite large and the only lighting the studio is the overhead house lights which can make filming look quite grainy and have a slight green tint to them which we didn't want. It was part of my role to find a way to counteract these issues and find a way to make our footage look clean and well lit.  Studio Floor Plan The director and I started with a floor plan of where we thought our props might work, this included the television we wanted to green screen and the drinks table where one of our actors would be standing at. We got into the studio and looked at our plan to work out the dimensions of everythi...

Like with our other location, being able to go and see the house before we film is extremely useful as it gives me the opportunity to go round and look for anything that might be an issue, look at lighting and sound and establish a plan for the day of shooting.  For this location, most of the filming happens outside the house on the driveway which poses a few more challenges than filming inside. The sound recording for this location is going to be difficult as the house is located on a 40mph main road. In order to get around this, I suggest that we don't start filming until after rush hour traffic has passed and try to get all the exterior shots done and more to the interior before the afternoon school run starts. This should hopefully minimise the number of car sounds we have to deal with and make things slightly easier. Despite us being on a tight schedule, I think that if a crew member can hear a car approaching, we wait before rolling as it's really important that we ...

After receiving the feedback from our pre-production package, there were some changes that I had already decided on that I wanted to make to the title sequence.  As I watched back the video I felt as though I could definitely add a few more aspects to the characters and the background which would enhance the video and add in some more elements from our story and the characters personalities. The first idea I had was changing their animated faces to actual images of our actors. I saw this used in other title sequences such as the Big Fat Quiz of the Year and on a children’s television programme titled “All Over the Place”. These both incorporate the idea of combining animation and real footage to add to the title sequences. I personally really like this style and want to try and take aspects of this to incorporate into the Young & Famous opening titles. CBBCs All Over The Place To do this, I asked Laura to set aside some time to take some pictures of ou...