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Transition Unit: Shoot Day 1 - Hotel scene

Our first day of shooting was at a hotel called Bridgewood Manor, located on Bluebell Hill in Kent. It is a luxury hotel, so we were lucky that we were given permission to film there, and were not charged anything either. 

The room that we were given was quite small, but we managed to make it work by changing some camera angles, and also being creative with the angles. We were hoping to take roughly 2 hours to film what we needed, however there were some problems with the camera at the start of the shoot. Due to the lights in the room being what they were, the picture on the camera was looking to unnatural in its colour. We tried to use natural light, but the window in the room was quite small, so could not illuminate the room enough. When we decided to use the room's lighting, with the LED light panel that we had added to it with a slight yellow tinge, we eventually managed to make the display on the camera look right. 

Due to there only being three of us in the group, along with the two actors that we had, I was put on sound, so was using the boom mic throughout the shoot. Due to the size of the room, It was sometimes difficult to stay out of shot of the camera, especially during the mirror shots and camera pans. 

We had the track and dolley for the camera, and we wanted to use it to get some shots, at the very least just to have some more clips available to edit. The main shot that that we wanted to get using the track was a contra zoom of Alex, one of our actors, turning around to look at the door. It took a few tries, due to having to get the speed, zoom and focus right all at the same time, but it eventually worked.

Overall, the shoot took longer than expected due to the problems that we encountered, but we were able to overcome them. The actors were also very good to work with, and were very professional during the shoot, and I would be happy to work with them again

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