Documentary Unit - Shoot Week (Thorpe Park)

After getting a clear schedule and week view of what we were shooting on different days, today we shot at our first shooting location, Thorpe Park. We arrived at the park on schedule before it opened at 10:00am to give us plenty of time to queue and get into the park. Once in, we had the whole day to shoot the pieces we needed.

 We were not allowed to use a tripod as it was a public place where guests were responsible by the park so we used a Canon DSLR and a Clip Mic to capture throughout the day. I wanted to make sure we got all the footage we needed as this was going to be a main feature of the documentary so we made it our priority to shoot all of the presenting bits first then get GV's of all the rides and attractions to get an overview of the park.

I first introduced where I was and what I was doing at the park. We decided that the best place to do this was on a public balcony giving an overview of the entire park. This gave an establishing shot to the audience and allowed them to see what I was talking about.

Once we had done this we moved onto the first ride of the day, 'Stealth'. We decided using the stealth plaza would be a great place to introduce the ride and explain a bit about what it entails. We shot a piece to camera of myself using a clip mic to minimise other sounds with the ride in the background and purposely timed the piece so it would get the ride passing upwards as I started to speak and then pass back down again as I finished. This added a real impact to what I was talking about and gave the audience something to look at. 

After this we moved onto 'Derren Browns Ghost Train' and shot a piece to camera in the exact same way outside the attraction and its gates. As the other one was a shot of me walking from quiet a distance towards the camera we felt we needed a bit of variety. We decided to frame this shot tighter as a mid shot but stood me to the left to allow the audience to see I was still outside the attraction.

Stealth Framing

Ghost Train Framing

Once we had done pieces the two main pieces to camera I then experienced the rides for myself and gave the crew then filmed a review at the end to explain how my level of fear and adrenaline was throughout the 2 different attractions.

 We then focused on G.V.s. This involved various shots and sequences around the park of the rides and of me walking to allow for cut aways and voice overs. We also wanted to make sure we got a shot of the entrance sign to further establish where I was.

After this it was time to go home upload the footage to my laptop. We synced the screen to my television and viewed what we had done and how the shots looked on the bigger screen. Overall I am very happy with the coverage we have got and what we managed to achieve on the shoot.