The Filming Process: Day 1

Today was our first filming day, all group members were present and fulfilled a role. Anna Philona played the main character of the teen *Maria, Anna.C carried out the job of assistant director whilst myself and Shadei swapped roles of Director and filming throughout the day.

We choose to shoot all the scenes of the celibate teen getting raped on one day while next weekend we will be shooting the whole storyline of the religious cultural clash. Although we will be producing a short clip trailer we still decided that it would be more effective if we filmed many different shots to achieve the best possible overall outcome.

We began the first scene of the couple *Maria and *Dervish talking on the sofa. Though we had a draft script this was immediately improvised and changed as we realised it seemed too unnatural and it didn't seem to flow. Once the script was changed the acting improved dramatically establishing realism. For this scene we took both close up front shots of the two characters and also over the shoulder shots to emphasis the tension and awkward feelings the two were feeling - which could be discovered from the looks and actions of them. This scene took the longest and was the only one which involved dialogue.

The next part of the storyline was the party scene. We improvised greatly on mise en scene here - we darkened my room, used; bottles, glasses of drinks, spot lights, disco ball, fairy lights all as props to create a realistic effect. This worked out better than imagined though it was hard to produce the illusion that this party was overcrowded in a small confined area, using only 4-5 people and close up shots. Here we shot the mystery hand placing a drug into *Maria's drink, we see the tablet dissolving then Maria picking it up to drink.

The third scene showed *Maria being led up the shadowy stairs by a strange anonymous male character. It is obvious that she is not in the right frame of mind as the viewers will have established in the first scene she wants to remain a virgin and the previous scene of the drink being tampered with. We follow the two up the stairs were we are led into a bedroom, showing *Maria lying on the bed , we see a hand locking the door (we shot both long shots and close ups) then the figure of the male approaching the vulnerable girl on the bed, we also tracked *Dervish and will decide which looks better when we begin editing. Our last few shots were of *Maria holding a pregnancy test looking shocked these were all close-ups to view her expression.

Overall the day went well, though we will find out how well when we transfer the footage onto the computer and begin editing. This will start once we have finished all the filming process. Our next filming date will be held on the 6th December.