Lighting

In my test shots I encountered a few lighting issues with my footage. 

In this shot, you can see that the footage is quite dark and grainy. Originally, I thought in order to correct this I would have to use artificial light (e.g. studio lights). However, these are big and therefore not very practical to transport from college to location. After speaking to Liam, the media technician, he suggested that I try changing the shutter speed, ISO and frames per second which I am shooting in to see if that makes a difference. In this initial attempt, I was shooting at 25fps and I didn't even know it was possible to change the shutter speed when recording moving image, so this is something I am going to try out. 

Also I filmed this around three o'clock and due to the time of year it is starting to get dark and therefore there isn't a huge amount of light coming in from outside. This is why in my shooting schedule I have decided this will be one of the shots I do earliest in the day. 

One issue with shooting inside a house is that the lights are not the best, and footage often comes out yellow on camera. One of my media teachers suggested that to achieve a more professional look for my film I should try using filters on the lights to balance out the colours and make it feel real. 

UPDATE (27/11/2017)

However, these filters had to be ordered in especially for me and this meant that my filming was delayed and I didn't make the deadline set by my teacher for all footage to be filmed (Monday 20th November). As you can see from my earlier shooting schedule this wasn't a deadline I wasn't sure I would meet in the first place due to cast not being available, however now it is confirmed and this means I will not have as long to edit my first draft (due 18/12/2017).

The conversation I had with my media teacher about the light filters

After seeing the results from my test shots, I thought it would best to wait until the light filters arrived before I started filming. This is because if I start filming without the filters and then after they have arrived use them in some of my other scenes, there will be a noticeable difference in the quality of my footage and I want the quality of my work to be consistent to give it a more professional feel. 

Discussing the light filters with my other media teacher

As you can see from the above screenshot, the filters should hopefully arrive before I film this weekend. If they do not arrive in time I am still going to film because I have already made arrangements with my cast and these next two weekends will probably be the only time they are all available together before the deadline for my first draft. If I do not like the quality of the footage then I will try and correct this is post-production through colour grading (I have found some useful tutorials on how to do this), or I will have to re-shoot the footage in January if it is not good enough.

Colour grading tutorials on YouTube