We bought a HTDZ Super uni and multiple directional condenser microphones in the hope that it will aid us and improve our production. We as a group noticed from last year’s productions from ourselves and our class that videos with dialogue was normally to be recorded straight from the microphone built into the camera. We found that this was a very bad way to record dialogue simply because the quality of the sound was nothing special, we wanted for our production an impressive and very clear dialogue to add realism to our production over others. The camera recording of dialogue also caused unwanted background noise such as wind and just decrease the general quality of sound.
This is the shotgun microphone we brought and it allows us to use two settings. Normal, which uses the multi-directional microphones around the mic and tele, which uses a more directional microphone on the top which can be pointed at a specific target. We did a few tests to test out the microphone.
For our first scene, It was an indoor scene at night so we didn't have to worry about weather and continuity so this would be easy to film early before the other scenes, also as the same characters were not used again makes it easy to edit together. The first shots were filmed at Dave's house and garage which we cleared out and set up to look like a hitman's hideout. Because it was night time, we used a lamp behind the camera to give an appropriate dim ambient light to the scene, we had to move the lamp in order to keep the lighting the same in every shot. This was effective as you can see the hitman's shadow on the brick wall. The next set of shots was filmed in Dave's living room. Again we cleared it out and added our own props to make it look like a drug dealers pad. We have bottles of alcohol on the table as well as weighing scales, (fake) cocaine blocks, a gun, money etc. The props were a vital part because our location setting wasn't ideal so we had to make it as realistic as possible using props. We got a variety of shots, all adding up to give tension and build up adding a great first scene. 
The kit we used for this was a Cannon EOS 550D camera which allowed us to with lenses for different shots and use the manual focus to blur in and out some shots as we have seen this used effectively in our product research. We also had a tripod for still shots so the camera was stable and the quality of the shot was good. 
There is also driving shots in our first scene. Because our actor, Dan, wasn't insured, I had to drive. We got around this by dressing me up as the hit man which was ok because he was wearing a hat and scarf, and it was dark, making it hard to see facial features. 
