Our FdSc Film Production Technology students have been working hard on their group project all year – from location scouting trips to professional casting sessions, it all culminated with a two day on-location filming residential.
What started off as a concept has slowly developed into a full feature film for seven film student groups. FdSc Film Production Technology student Christie Ellis and her group have gone to Youlgreave for two full days of filming to shoot their film Heading Out. The project has been ongoing since the beginning of the academic year and has gone through various stages of pre-production.
Location
In November, the group went on a recce in order to begin planning their location shoot during the residential. They knew they wanted to film in the middle of nowhere because their story is built around two siblings going on a camping holiday, so the landscape around Youlgreave was the perfect backdrop.
Casting
A further stage was casting, which again involved a lot of exciting work. The casting call was available to external professional actors and auditions were held both on Skype and in person. The female lead – Rebekah Cutmore – auditioned after finding out about the project from the NTU Drama society. Her on-screen brother and male lead – Adam Redford – is a professional actor from London who the students had the opportunity to audition through Skype after uploading role details on Casting Network – an online casting website whose representatives came in for a guest lecture earlier in the year.
Daily journal
Throughout the two days of filming Christie has kept a journal which documented her experience on-location. Below is an excerpt of what her and her group got up to whilst filming Heading Out.
Monday 27 March 2017
06:15am – Today is the day I go off to Youlgreave to make our film, Heading Out. I’m so excited that the day has finally arrived, we have been planning it for three months now. It’s a very early start though, which isn’t good because I’m not a morning person.
08:00am – Now that everyone has arrived at Confetti reception, we are on the way to Youlgreave. I am sitting in the front of the mini-bus, while the rest of the film crew and our actors are in the back so I get to control the stereo.
10:00am – WE HAVE ARRIVED IN YOULGREAVE!!! After two hours on the road, we met up in the car park with Ollie (member of Confetti’s tech support team) who brought all the camera and audio equipment.
11:00am – At our first filming location now – River Lathkill – it’s slightly cloudy weather but hopefully it will clear up soon. We are going to start filming with scene 3.
14:00pm – After a 30 minute lunchbreak, back to filming we go as we’ve got a lot to do in a short space of time and the sun will be going in soon. We need to make the most of the daylight we have left.
18:30pm – On our way to the hostel after a very long but productive day, as we have got all the scenes with Adam finished. As a team, we were quite concerned we wouldn’t have enough time but now we are here we reflect that it all went really well and all the scenes went very smoothly.
Tuesday 28 March 2017
06:00am – I woke up early and decided it was time to get some breakfast and get ready for yet another long day of filming. After breakfast my team and I spent time working through the plan for the day.
08:00am – After talking to the team, we needed to start getting ready to leave and sort out the camera and audio equipment needed for the day.
10:00am – Today we are focusing on the shots we need for scene 2. The woods next to the River Bradford are perfect for it, since it needs to be in the middle of nowhere.
11:15am – Just finishing up scene 2. It took a while because we needed to set up everything (the camera itself, the tripod and audio equipment including the boom mic) and as we are only at this location once, we thought it would be a good idea to film the scene from lots of different angles.
13:00pm – We’ve only got a few more scenes to film and then we are finished. I’m getting so excited now. Both days have been so successful and productive, the team and I are very happy with how it all worked out.
14:45pm – WE HAVE OFFICALLY FINISHED HEADING OUT!!! After two whole days we have finally completed our film. The team and I are so happy and we have just found out that we were the first group to finish, which was pretty good news. Now we’re ready to start editing and get Heading Out ready for screening!
Vlogging
Want a sneak peek at what our students got up to during their two day shoot? Christie filmed a vlog which documents her group’s two day shoot for Heading Out.
Our students will also have the opportunity to take advantage of our 25 seat screening room at Space2 to organise private screenings for Heading Out as well as the movies created by the six other groups on our FdSc Film Production Technology course.
Want to ‘Do it For Real’ at Confetti like our FdSc Film Production Technology students? Apply for a Confetti Degree course now! You can request a prospectus and if you want to explore our facilities, book a place onto our next open day.
