Shoot Day - 13th April

We shot some footage for our documentary yesterday at Doddington Place Gardens. As we wanted to capture some drone footage to use during some montage sections, we asked Josh to borrow his drone, of which he was happy to let us do. He came with us to the location so he could fly the drone and crew on the project. We came prepared with all of the documents we would need including our shot list for guidance on the day as well as the risk assessments and consent forms for those involved. We were all nervous about getting everything done in time but were excited to get started. We met with Kayleigh who showed us round and gave us a short tour of the grounds. We began to set up the cameras and had a look at our shotlist. We decided to shoot some of the cutaways of the location first as we had access to them. We used one of the Sony cameras to capture these. Once Darren had arrived, we shot the introduction with him announcing where he was and what the subject matter of the documentary was. After this, we encountered a huge weather issue. It began to rain and hail heavily so we took the equipment inside the cafe area to keep it protected. This pushed our schedule back considerably and meant that we couldn't capture as much action for the opening. We had to think on our feet and quickly re-locate to the Hawking Centre where there would be shelter. We had to then shoot the interview with Jo inside with the birds as the rain meant that we had no other option. This however, caused an interference with the sound as the birds were all making noise in the background. With the weather issue, this was the only solution and something we'll have to try and get round in the editing process. After the rain stopped we were able to carry out the interview with Julie outside. She incorporated one of the vultures which meant that we could include some interaction between the presenter and a vulture to carry the narrative and encourage the audience to care a little more about them. This was a much more successful interview which will look better in the final documentary. Overall, the shoot day was quite unsuccessful as the weather issues meant that we couldn't stick to the schedule and cover everything that we wanted to. Therefore, we have decided to arrange to film there again next week to get much more footage including more action shots, flying shots with one of the vultures and drone footage.