Health and Safety Risks

As a precaution, we had to think and evaluate all of the possible hazard during filming in order to prevent them from occuring and harming any one or any equipment. 

Permission Documents

In order to get actors and extras for our opening, we had to ensure that any that were under the age of 18 had permission from a parent or guardian for them to be filmed.

Film Title - ROADS

After some discussion on the film title we finally came up with 'ROADS':

• We came up with this title because in the film, the girl takes lots of roads and paths to different places in her life and she has to make decisions. 
• We found that it was very common for a lot of comedies to take on film titles with just one word in it and for dark comedies to use word with room for interpretation from the audience. For example "Trainspotting", although there is not a single train in the film, it is the title and leaves audiences thinking about the reason why.
• When we googled roads to see if it came up with anything behind the name we found that it is a drugs centre in Bristol, so seen as our film is about drugs we were set on having this name because we liked the name and it suited our film. 
• Roads stands for 'Recovery Orientated Alcohol & Drugs Service' and this is what our film is all about so we decided to have a read of the website and find out what it was all about and to see if it would help to make our opening scene more real and authentic. 
• We also thought that when someone searches for our film it will also come up with the website which some people may find helpful as they may not know about it. We want our film to make people more aware of the problems of drugs and the effect it has on everyone and the services that are available to help with drugs. 
• This is what the Roads website looks like:

Location Recce - Bedroom Change

1st February 2017

Under certain circumstances, it turned out that we were unable to use the first bedroom that we planned so had to recce a second choice.

We liked how this bedroom looked as it shows the tom-boyish side of our protagonist from the stereotypical blue. It also has non copyrighted posters on the walls which we thought went well with the messy character.

We planned to move the bed into the centre of the room as this would allow us to use the space around it to fill with the credits and allow for panning shots.

As a group, we realised that we would have to remove certain parts of the room, such as names and photos of the boy whose room it is, as this could distract or confuse the audience towards the personality or identity of our character.

However some aspects could be kept, such as guitars and guitar amps, that build the background and interests of the character. As well as this, the bottle tops on the wall could be taken off and scattered on the floor to add to her messy persona and underage drinking, enhancing the theme of drugs once again as well as the genre of comedy drama.

When taking pictures of the bedroom, I decided to take a picture of the bed from a high angle, as this is what we desired to do during the actual filming of the opening, to allow a sense of what it would look like in the final piece.

Film Rating

According to BBFC guidelines our film would be a 15.

Drug use is shown however it is not promoting or encouraging it as the film is about how they affect the characters life.

As the genre is a comedy drama, we would continue the use of strong language as this can be considered comical in use, as well as showing the reality of teenagers and their lives.

Our opening does not contain any sex however the rest of the film would have sexual scenes as this would fit into the life of a teenager as well as her own accidents or events due to the drugs and alcohol that go along with the theme.

Filming Day 1

29th January 2017

After fixing our final locations as a group, we set a date to shoot the first two scenes of the opening. As a group, we met in Tonbridge Park along with our actor, Ebony Paice and the extras, Brian Bradley, Ben Bradley and Ethan Simpson.


Luckily, there were not many people actually in the park which allowed us to film for a longer time, without the risk of shooting a member of the public without their consent. If this ever was a risk, we stopped filming and informed them what we were doing until they moved on and passed by.

We decided to use two options of costume for our protagonist, one which was dull and dark going along with the theme of drugs and the dark side of our comedy drama, and the other which went along with our colour scheme.

During the shooting, we were cautious of the swipe screen where one extra would run across the screen extremely closely which would switch the location to the brick wall. To make sure we got this shot done well, we had to overshoot to give ourselves options during the editing stage.





We decided to use a tripod instead of a handheld as we tested both, one walking and the other just zooming in, this was for the very first opening shot. The handheld was extremely shaky and did not give the effect we wanted so we decided to use a tripod which also improved the continuity as the second scene along the brick wall was also planned to be filmed in this way.

We then moved on to filming the brick wall after the swipe screen. As we shot each scene in chronological order, we started with the swipe screen which we again had to overshoot so that the switch between the two scenes could be consistent and smooth. 

Headshots of Actors

27th January 2017

Main Actor - Ebony Paice

Plays protagonist girl and is visible in all three locations.

Extra 1 - Ben Bradley

Plays a young boy in the park that runs past the camera screaming for comic effect.

Extra 2 - Ethan Simpson

Plays a second young boy in the park that runs past the camera.

Extra 3 - Brian Bradley

Plays an adult man in the park who is chasing the two younger boys. Walks quickly past the screen whilst shouting ".........................." for comic effect and a sense of the rough area where the protagonist lives, adds to the drama genre and harsh theme of drugs.