The process went well although I didn't think about the fact that I can't direct the seagulls. I couldn't find any scary looking gulls standing on the groynes, like they are in my storyboard, so I had to make do with the ones just sitting on the beach:
They did well though, and I got some good shots where they were sitting behind Anna watching her eat.
I have made a roughly edited 24 second video from all the rushes (49 clips). It obviously needs a lot of work but I just made this in iMovie to check I had got all the footage I needed and to get an idea of whether the end bit will work with the close up chip stealing shot:
This has the minimum 20 edits but is much too long at 24 seconds.
I'm hoping I can get rid of all the wind noise and make the sound nice and smooth, but with punchy sound effects. I think I will also add a video filter for the seagull-eye-view shots to make them seem more sinister.
If I was to shoot this again (which I might) I would get some shots for after the chip has been stolen, the seagull actually eating the chip, the bag falling on the floor, and Anna looking very sad at the loss of her chips. If I'd have had a complete storyboard that would have helped. I'd also make sure everything was in focus as some things that are close up, but not close enough for the macro mode, are out of focus like Anna's face and the first chip bag shot.
However I am very pleased with the last bit where the gull finally takes the chip. In reality there were actually about 15 seagulls who all pounced on the bag a few minutes after I left the camera:
Even after I've slowed it down loads they are still really fast and at 30 fps there aren't actually many frames of the first gull grabbing the chip, but I think there is just about enough and at the 50% speed I've used in the draft above you can see what is going on without an obvious drop in the frame rate.
Another mistake I made because of not storyboarding properly is that Anna is suddenly standing up when the seagull swoops down on her after having been sat down in all the other shots. I'm hoping I can just hide this by cropping it slightly. I couldn't get the close ups of the seagulls heads that i had storyboarded because the camera doesn't have an optical zoom, and i didn't want to use the rubbish digital one, so i took some shots on my stills camera which has a good zoom. I'm hoping that if the shot is fast enough, you wont be able to tell that the seagull is frozen solid.
