Major Project Production Unit - Shoot Day: London

For this shoot, we needed to travel up to London filming at Piccadilly Circus, Savile Row and The Financial District. Having organised permits and permissions I ensured that the crew and cast were all legally fine and had sorted out all the right paper work so no issues would be caused. We ensured the equipment was fully charged the night before and I had a look over the shot list that I had produced so I knew what shots we needed to get when we was up there. On the first day, this was just Piccadilly and Savile row as we would not have time to do the financial district this day so we would film that on the following day.

When we got there, we had some lunch and stopped at a nearby cafe that we had scouted out before to ensure we had a place to go to set up the equipment and make sure everything was ready to go for when we arrived at the location. Once everything was set up, we then headed over to Piccadilly and started shooting. It was incredibly busy here which we knew it would be and crowds of people were watching us and taking photos. This made everyone slightly on edge at first but I reassured everyone to carry on as if it was a normal shoot and a set and once we got going everything was fine. We made sure we was not in the way of everyone and that we were safe in what we was doing.

I wanted to get some shots of Claudia walking around the iconic place ensuring it is all captured and recognisable. I carried out plenty of different shots following her from behind, tracking from the front, low angles, wides, close ups and pans. I wanted to get as much movement as possible to add to the busyness and the motion of the place itself. Claudia took my direction really well and settled into the character well. Overall once we concentrated on what we was doing everything went really well and the shots look great. 

After this we went back to the coffee shop to review our footage and then moved to Savile row. I had gone to different shops explaining that we were doing a shoot and needed carrier bags. All the shops were happy to provide us with them which helped with this scene. I chose Savile Row as this is an expensive place to shop in London and it had a lot of expensive cars and window fronts. It was also a little less busy than Regents Street adding to the exclusivity of the street and less High Street. Overall these shots went really well and I am pleased with what we got.

The following day we headed back up to London and concentrated on the Financial District. The lighting had changed and instead of sunny it was overcast which was annoying but it didn't affect the film too much as the two scenes are separate rather than integrated together. When we got up there, we found another local cafe and began setting up the equipment like last time. Once this was done we went to where the first scene was and began shooting. Although it was busy again, we all felt a lot more relaxed on this day and went straight into it which was great. The first place was St Pauls Cathedral and I made sure when looking at the shot list I got all the coverage I needed to get. Something a little frustrating was that I wanted her to be sitting on the steps of St Pauls Cathedral but we couldn't as the permit would not allow us to film on the actual grounds but I worked around it getting different shots outside. We also tried a different type of shot that I haven't done before using the gimble where we moved all around her. This gave a really nice effect and turned out really different.

Once we had done these shots we then used the underground to head to where all the high rise sky scrapers were. I wanted these shots to show a more modern city look and to see her amongst the buildings. These shots were a little more tricky as it was getting dark but we managed to light the scene well and continue shooting until we got the shots that I wanted to get.

Overall Im really happy with how everything went and I feel we all dealt with everything really well. You can see a behind the scenes video that I made below about London