Filming Progress

Day 1
The first day of filming we interviewed MP Christopher Pincher. The interview will feature quite prominently in our extract. We filmed a two shot of me and Mr Pincher. I was holding a microphone so we could use that audio if the camera audio wasn't loud enough.

Day 2
On the second day of filming we decided to film at the train station as the whole extract of the documentary is about HS2 which is the railway being built from London to Birmingham so train station would feature frequently in our extract. We started by going to ticket office inside the train station to ask for permission for us to shoot which they agreed to happily. We moved onto the platforms, obtaining different shots of different subjects. Mostly our shots consisted of pans, long shots, close ups, medium shots and handheld shots. We tried experimenting with shots like the dutch tilt however they don't match the conventions of TV documentary. The shots consisted of trains, people getting onto the trains, the train station, national rail signs, London Midland logos and timetables. These shots will mostly go in scenes 1,3,5 but will occasional feature in the other scenes. After filming at the train station, we decided to go film at Tame Valley Nature Reserve. This location is much regarded for its picturesque countryside. We needed shots of the countryside to show what HS2 is going to destroy and the habitats it will destroy. The shots consisted of pans, long shots, close ups, medium shots.

Day 3
A week later we went and filmed again after reviewing the footage we got from day 2. We found that our shots at the train station were too similar so we needed to obtain a few more different shots. In addition, we needed shots of the town Tamworth and get footage of towns most well known places, like the river Tame the shopping centre, st Edith's church, the market and the statue of Sir Robert Peel. We chose to obtain too much footage than we needed as some of the footage may be unusable.

Day 4                                                                                                                     
The fourth day of filming, we decided to get a few more shots of Tamworth. We began at Ventura Park, the well known retail park. We knew being a retail park, traffic would be horrendous so we filmed some of that, to show one of the points that the HS2 would reduce traffic in areas. Then we got some shots near the SnowDome and the lake there as we felt we needed a few more shots, that didn't consist of trains and buildings.

Tayte's Filming
After reviewing all the clips, we found that we were missing a few clips to tie in with the voice-over. So Tayte went and filmed at house where HS2 is going straight through and filmed the protest posters on their stop HS2 board. He also captured some more footage of traffic on the A5 and cars going up and down roads to also go with what we filmed in Ventura on Day 4.

Equipment 
For the filming of our media we used different pieces of equipment and without these the product would have never been completed.

HD Camera - Is used to film all what we have filmed.
Tripod - To help position the camera at different levels of height and different angles
Phone Cameras - We used these for when we wanted to get detailed shots and more colourful shots, then we used these for the screenshots and pictures we used for the Print artefacts. 
Microphone - We used this in the interview to make it easy to be heard.

Problems During Filming

The weather

The weather, shots looked different because of it. The worst thing about this country is the very inconsistent weather. This proved a problem to us as we did 3 filmed over a few weeks in which the weather got particularly colder each time and it caused a few of the shots to be different than others. We solved this by using colour correction in the editing to edit the backgrounds so they all look similar and consistent.

Having too many of the same shots.

Each time we went out we underestimated the amount of train shots we got and ended up going out and filming for 3 days instead of 2. Also after looking at the final amount of footage we did get too many of the same shots, which means, I think that the documentary at times can look a bit repetitive.

Voxpops

When conducting the voxpops in Tamworth, we found no-one wanted to participate in our project, so we had to gather people from our school to talk about the HS2 which was still good as we got some great opinions .

Time management

I feel like we could of managed our time a lot better, as I think we spent far too long planning the documentary, rather than getting the majority of the filming done earlier.

Planning the expert Interview with MP Christopher Pincher

During the planning process of the documentary, we analysed different modes and types of documentaries. We discovered that most documentaries that trying to put across a certain point of view on a topic are expository documentaries. Expository documentaries use interviews with experts to persuade the audience into believing a certain point of view as well as using facts and figures to backup an argument. So we had an idea of getting someone official to go and interview and ask questions about the HS2 like a HS2 researcher or Sir Patrick McLoughlin (former Secretary of State for Transport). However we were unsuccessful and were planning to stop using this idea. Until we found out that our local MP Christopher Pincher was visiting our sixth form for the politics students, knowing this we emailed Pincher to ask him he would like to participate in our extract.

The interview overall went well, as I conducted all the questions correctly and we definitely got more footage than we needed as MP Christopher Pincher was very good at giving detailed answers to are in depth questions. Tayte manned the camera as we both agreed that I would be the better interviewer as I knew more about the overall subject. We originally planned for there to be a shot reverse shot during the interview, however the room we were given was slightly too small and we had to improvise and use a standard Two shot which overall still work well.

During the editing process, we are thinking of using as much as this footage as we can, as interviews with experts is a common convention in a documentary. This can be seen in documentaries like supersize me & Banking on Bitcoin which keep on referring back to the same expert throughout the film, this is what we have tried to implement into a shorter space of time, in our film.

Here is all the whole interview of me interviewing MP Christopher Pincher.