Filming "Coercion" (Narrative) Day 1

As said in another post, filming for my narrative film, "Coercion", took place on the 17th and 18th of April. As the entire film is based in one location, travelling wasn't an issue allowing for better use of time. The reason for shooting over two days was to film as much content as possible on the first day, if not all of it, and then the second day would be to shoot anything I feel we may have missed or anything that could be done better after having looked at rushes on the first evening.

The actors arrived on set for 9:30 on both days to be briefed on how the day was planned to go. Everything was filmed chronologically to make sure any clothing that may or would be stained by fake blood would be the very last thing we shot, to ensure we had everything we needed from the other scenes before it was too late.


Day 1

Shooting: Scene 1

Scene 1 was the first and slowest scene I filmed, and I think that was mainly because I hadn't been in the director's seat for quite some time, and I was awake early ensuring I had everything I could have possibly needed for the shoot.

This scene is about where we first meet the main character, Sarah (played by Gwynneth Megan Wroe), she is seen holding a pregnancy test that reads positive and she is unsure whether to be overjoyed or terrified. The scene demonstrates how she is quick to dismiss people around her, but why that is is explained throughout the film as we meet her controlling boyfriend, Michael (played by Alexander-James Keen). After the events of scene one have happened, the audience now understands that Sarah believed her baby was conceived out of love but has been proven otherwise.

The pregnancy test was an easy prop to obtain and make read positive. I bought two on eBay in case one went wrong, opened it with a knife and painted the lines on with nail varnish. Everything other than the allotted time went to plan for this scene, everybody on set was comfortable with each other, the actors learned their lines which made the performance part run really smoothly, and I soon became more in charge of the set because of this.


Shooting: Scene 2

Scene 2 was definitely the most straight forward scene to film as it contains no dialogue nor any other audio that would need to be recorded on set, and only has the lead actress in it.

This scene is set a few days after scene one, although the film doesn't state it, the audience is to assume it. It shows the Sarah partially undressed in the bathroom, covering up bruises she was given by her controlling boy friend. The reason for this scene is to demonstrate how fragile her character is. She has been the victim of abuse for some time, and is used to her routine of hiding bruises and scars, the scene depicts that she uses make up and long sleeved clothes to do so.

As I had ran over time filming scene 1, and only myself and Gwynneth were needed to film, this enabled the others to break and have food as well as making Gwynneth feel more comfortable being partially undressed. After filming this scene I was back on schedule.


Shooting: Scene 3

Scene 3 is the most dialogue heavy and emotionally driven scene in the film which I feared I would again lose time when filming it, however, everybody had warmed up at this point and was in the swing of things, everything went smoothly.

This scene tells the audience that the Sarah's best friend, Jess (played by Claire Love) has also been abused by Sarah's boyfriend, and had come to warn her before she was hurt too. The audience knows Sarah is already being abused by him, but they now understand that she doesn't tell anybody, and even now is still afraid to speak up as she kicks Jess out, and then cries to herself.


FIRST NIGHT RUSHES

After finishing filming Scene 3, I decided to call it a day as it was 5 O'Clock and we were losing light, so I decided to film scene 4 on the 18th.

As soon as the actors left, I loaded the footage onto my computer and began briefly editing it together, and I noticed a few things that I wanted to either re-shoot, do differently or add. Here are some things I wanted to redo:

Re-shoots

From scene 1, I didn't notice this until I saw it on a bigger screen than the LED viewfinder on my camera, but this shot is actually slightly out of focus, and I originally intended to use this for a about 5-8 seconds.

Again from scene 1, this is another case of what can and can't be determined on a small screen; this shot I thought was extremely dark, and as this is a follow shot, it needed to look good.

From scene 2, this shot is again slightly out of focus as well as being off center. The off center aspect of this issue can be fixed in post production, however, it is near impossible to fix focus issues.

This was the last camera issue I encountered from the day, this LED light under the mirror caused a problem with the picture. To the human eye, it is a still beam of light, but on camera, it appears as though a fan blade or something of the sorts is slowly passing in front of it. This is not a difficult issue to fix as the light can be turned off.

Additions

The main things I wanted to add were cutaways, and I already had in mind what kind I needed, for example; Sarah getting cooking equipment out of cupboards and drawers at the start of scene 3. To save time in the first shoot, I decided to film those sort of things on day 2.

Changes

There are a few lines in the script that were slightly altered within the actors performance on the day, but one remained the same and I've always been unsure about it since I wrote it, and that is when in Scene 3 Jess tells Sarah that Mike has raped her, and the line is literally "Sarah, he raped me". When I watched it back, I still wasn't happy with it, and the delivery of the line wasn't as sincere as I hoped for it to be. The way I intend to overcome this is by asking Claire to bring her own twist to it by saying what she believes should be said.