Day Four of Filming 'The Hunt for the Campus Cat' Documentary

This was our last day of filming so we had to make sure we had everything we needed done by the end of this shoot. For this day we wanted to film in an office environment on campus because this would be the office of our detective character. We contacted our tutor the night before to ask and with her help we managed to get an office booked for us to use in this shoot. I helped decorate the empty office with props so that it looked authentic and we also used a practical light of a lamp to help with this look but to also give it contrasted lighting with a lot of shadows and one light source of the lamp. It looked very dramatic which is what we wanted. I again helped with camera operating on this day which had its challenges because we were no longer in an open space so we had to be much more aware when moving around where everybody was. We soon got into the swing of this and we got some really nice shots of the detective completing his investigation through the use of a pin board. The aim was to get a lot of different shots so we could cut them quite quickly to add pace to the piece almost in the way Edgar Wright uses montages in 'Sean of the Dead'. I think this was very successful. We then filmed one of our end scenes again taking place in the office but this time it was a meeting between the Detective and the Reporter. This was more challenging because we did it in one continuous shot to make it feel like a true documentary. This meant we had to track the characters as they entered and exited but then whilst they talked I had to stay very still with the camera which was at times a challenge but I feel after a few practices and a few takes we got it. We also went outside briefly to record a short scene of the presenter wrapping up the documentary with a final speech. We weren't sure if we needed this but we did it just in case we decided in editing we did. Lastly we used the quiet office to our advantage to record our film noire voice overs which we knew we wanted as not only would they add some film noire styled drama but they are also a typical convention of a documentary. Overall this day went really well and I feel like I pushed myself a lot with my camera operating.