St. Michael's Street, 8:30AM
On our first day of filming, we decided to focus solely on Hamlet's scenes. Unfortunately, we had forgotten to bring a tripod, so we tried to do without. We decided to film our scenes chronologically and started with our opening shot- Hamlet strolling along the pavement, the camera panning/following him from across the street. This we managed to do fairly successfully, the pan was pretty smooth and Conall's acting was superb, However, some over-confident, cocky students decided to ruin the shot by striking poses and making faces while the camera was rolling, ruining our shot. We re-took the scene a few times to similar, if not worse effect. St. Michaels is a wonderful, symmetrical hidden street in Oxford, with a small, attractive church at it's end, providing a wonderful background and perfect framing. Our next shot depicted Conall walking calmly toward the camera (making me back-track) away from the church, framed by the glass fronted shops. Although a sound idea, it was difficult to create a smooth hand-held dolly shot without a tripod, and having busy people bumping into you. There were some salvageable shots (it is possible to adjust stabilization in the post-production stage via iMovie) so we decided to move on.
Cornmarket Street, 9:00AM
Cornmarket was busy with people going to work and we felt that their urgency and mundane-ness would fit in well with our video. On a brainwave, we decided to set the camera on the ground and film the different feet of the passersby, imagining that we could speed up the footage to make for an interesting, if unoriginal, sequence for our opening titles. After a few minutes, and having our camera kicked over by a woman's pointy high heels, we moved on. The shots filmed here would later be discarded at the advice of our media teacher.
Ship Street, 9:20 AM
We moved on to the calmer, less frequented Ship Street and decided to continue to experiment with the the 'camera-on-the-floor' technique, even though it wasn't in our storyboard. After a small discussion, we decided to have Hamlet walk towards the camera and step-over it, like an obstacle, resulting in our of our favourite shots.We repeated this shot several times, all resulting in stable, attractive sequences. A cigarette butt lay in front of the camera, cementing our theme of Hamlet being associated with the urban metropolis, contrasting to Ophelia in the rural greenworld.
Turl Street/Broad Street, 9:40AM
The Oxford Art and Poster Shop on the corner of Turl Street is one of my favourite places in Oxford, not only because it sells fantastic prints, but also because an Anthony Gormley statue is situated on the roof. It can look quite creepy at times, playing the role of a silent observer, and I thought it perfect for our video. The shot required Conall to walk along Turl Street and then round the corner onto Broad Street, disappearing as the camera panned up to focus on the statue. This shot was not only difficult to accomplish without a tripod, but also due to Broad Street being a very busy street with pedestrian and cyclist traffic. The shot had to be filmed multiple times due to cyclists inadvertently riding into shot and obscuring Conall, and Conall bumping into people around the corner, but we eventually got the shot we wanted.
In conclusion, forgetting the tripod was an amateurish mistake, and we paid for it with mostly shaky, shots. Nonetheless, it was possible to retrieve some sequences via shot stabilization in the editing suite. We also learned that going to film early in the day is the best time to film, and we caught the end of this and the beginning of peak-time, resulting in some ruined shots from unaware passersby.
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