The main goal of the narrative shoot, besides the actual filming it’s self, was to ensure that, by utilizing mise en scene and camera, the character was portrayed correctly. We made sure to use canted angles and jump shots to show the character as imperfect and troubled. We had Max’s character in dark and baggy clothes to reflect his mood.

Our second shoot involved gathering all the footage we needed to display the narrative. This was a much more efficient process when compared to the performance shoot. This is due to having a much clearer vision and plan of what we needed to film. We had a story board which acted as a base of the shots we needed. We looked at the story board a wrote down all the key shots and what angles were to be used and also went and added some extra notes of footage to get to potentially use in-between the key shots if we needed.

Throughout the filming process, I directed Max to help get the best performance possible to help clearly display the narrative. This often involved me telling him to try and put more exaggeration into the emotions he was meant to portray. For example, in any shots where he was standing or walking about, I told him to slouch his shoulders forward and to be loose and relaxed with his movements. This helped to show his character in a state of poor mental health and low motivation.

However, looking back at the footage once we we back in school we realised that a large amount of the footage was out of focus which meant we had to shoot again during our summer holidays. We followed the same process as before but just had to make sure that the camera was all set up correctly for each shot. We also made a small costume change as we thought that having Max wear black clothes fits better with the image we were trying to portray.

What went well

• Planning shots
• Planning angles and framing
• Directing Max

What didn’t go so well

• Making sure the camera was in focus
• Costume design