Forest Filming Diary Entry

1. Friday 5th February: 10am
Exciting day for KGMA – first filming day! Alice, Grace
and I began the seemingly long walk to Katie’s
house… In the rain… And the wind. Whilst we walked,
we came up with the idea to start videoing our
experiences of filming during the day and this
included our walk to Katie’s. To get to Katie’s, we took
a cut-through (this meant walking through the
muddy, cold forest) however this was a wise idea on
our part as we were able to pinpoint specific spots
that would be good for filming. The walk was rather
entertaining, not to mention tiring, with lots of
almost-falls! We were upbeat and positive about
what we wanted to achieve from our day filming,
although we did envy Katie who at this point was all
warm and cosy in her house. (Whether we’d be
envying her in a few hours was a different story!)
Friday 5th February: 11am
Alice, Grace and I arrive at Katie’s: cold, muddy-shoed
yet still keeping that KGMA positivity! We have a
group talk, then decide to get our actress ready. She
got into the hospital gown (kindly provided by Grace’s
Mum) and we then focused on her hair and makeup.
Due to the type of character she is playing, we
decided to make her hair looked messy (Katie did this
herself by backcombing a lot of sections of hair). As a
group, we came to the conclusion that a natural
looking character would best for our thriller opening,
so Katie applied very minimal makeup; (Grace filmed
Katie doing her makeup and hair so we could use
these for our blog posts). The four of us were buzzing
with anticipation and plenty of ideas; all eager to get
out and start filming. The weather was not going to
stop us, or put us off! In theory, the weather
conditions will add to our opening anyway!

2. Friday 5th February: 11:30- 1:20pm
And we were off! We started a video blog immediately
to capture everyone’s mood. We decided our first spot
was going to be the grass area leading into the forest,
which we soon discovered was extremely muddy. There
was a slight slope that we thought would be effective to
have Katie running down. (Collectively, we decided that
our shots would be short, and we would film lots of
them so we had a fair bit to mess around and edit with
when we returned to school.) Take one. Katie begin to
run. Run, run, run… Oh dear, she took a tumble, one
that was very amusing for us onlookers and one that we
enjoyed looking back on several times. Once edited, we
are hoping to use it as part of our film.
After recovering from the fall, well, after Katie had
recovered from the embarrassment and us the laughter,
we moved forward, using various parts of the forest to
film lots of quick shots of Katie, whether it be running,
standing still lost or just simply shots of the trees and
surrounding areas. The only camera angle we struggled
with was a high angle, however we came up with the
idea for Alice to get on Grace’s shoulder (with me
(supporting) so we could get the best replica of this
angle shot possible. Another issue we encountered
was that often we would start filming, realising that
someone else was in the shot. This wasn’t too much of
an issue as we just had to re-film. We then took the
very difficult walk (difficult due to the vast amount of
wet, soggy mud) to another part of the woods. To use
the part of the forest we wanted, we had to jump
across a river (all part of the KGMA adventure!) It was
well worth it though, as we managed to get a lot more
footage in this part. Once we were happy that we had
plenty of footage to go back to sixth form with, we
then made the decision to go back to Katie’s and make
a plan of action from this point forward – a.k.a. what
blog posts we were all going to be in charge of and
when we should film the next bulk. It was all very
exciting!