I could read all the books in the world about different lenses, but I feel like that wouldn’t be as helpful to me personally than if I set up a little practical test for myself. The idea was that I was going to get someone to sit on a chair; I would then film a bit, swap lenses, filmed a bit more and repeat that with all the lenses in the Samyang kit. The Samyang kit is a collection of prime lenses which I am able to book out from the University. This kit consists of a 14mm, 24mm, 35mm, 50mm and 85mm lenses. I booked out the Sony Fs7 camera (a camera that I was trying to use as much as possible this year) along with the Samyang kit and a tripod. Lady Luck is very much an acquaintance of mine and the technician had some spare time so not only did I book out equipment from him, I was also able to use him as a model for this little practical. To the right of this paragraph, you can see how I had set this thing up. |
Respectfully admire the Mona Lisa socks and respectfully ignore my posture.
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As you can see from the pitch above, I was aiming to make this film in the style of a documentary/food travel show. But then this raised the question for me of how can I also turn this project into a lighting lesson for myself? That was the initial intention for this project. However, when I had pitched the idea, it had been quite the rainy day so that inspired me to try and do the thing inside. In the University, there is a room called the TV studio which can be pretty much blacked out with dark curtains. This would give the perfect opportunity to set up a lighting kit within the studio to experiment with. The lighting kit I went with was one called ‘Dedolight 24V 3 Head Basic Kit’. I really think it was the word basic that had originally attracted me to this specific one. Like I had said previously, I haven’t got that much experience in the area so I thought I would stay away from any kits that looked harder to use than the ol ‘plug in and turn on’. This set had also been used in the second half of filming Kam’s film. I had watched and even sometimes partake in setting these lights up on that shoot. Because of this, I at least had some prior experience to using this specific kit. |
Above - Dedolight Kit
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Off the back of being a runner on Kam’s film before, I was then offered to help out once again on set. This time it ended up being not just his film but the residential film for the second years. I didn’t have much knowledge going into this project as I had not been there for the whole process from the beginning. The most I knew was that it was going to be a five-day shoot, starting Monday. I thought this project would very much help out on achieving the target I had set out for myself at the beginning to expand my contacts.
On this first day, my aim was to find out what the film was about and what role I am. After an early morning rundown of the storyboards, I was able to get an idea what the shoot was about and what type of work was required to make this project run nicely. We had spent the rest of this first day doing last minute location recces for all the filming locations. This all went swimmingly and the most I had added to this first day was inserting Aphex Twin’s ‘Selected Ambient Works 85-92' into the van’s CD player. It had been a long day and when I had gotten back home, I was still unsure what my role was so I just assumed the role of runner (as that was what on Kam’s previous set). |
Above - A collection of photo's from the Monday recce's.
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Above - The sunrise.
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Wednesday arrived at the unconventional time of half four in the morning. I wanted to be ready so as soon I heard Homer try and pronounce trampoline, I knew it was my call to try and get ready. I had managed to find my front door and got in the car with Kam and the lead actress for a half an hour drive to our first filming location. Once there, I had a quick meeting with the Director, D.O.P and Camera Operator about the upcoming day of shooting and schedule for everything. The sunrise that morning made waking at witching hour very much worth it as it was beautiful. But this moment of serenity was fleeting as the plan to film on the beach was scuppered as there was no beach to film on due to high tides. As Tuesday had not been the most efficient day of filming, we made the call to get some shots at Birnbeck Pier we could not get the day prior. We had three locations that day, Brean Beach, the house scene and the pier. As we weren’t meeting the rest of the crew till 9am, I believed we could do the pier scenes and then swing back round to the beach and meet everyone else there and then finish at the house. Due to meeting the rest of the crew at that time, I used my AD role to keep everything on time so we could then all meet up as soon as we finished at this location. This gave us 45 minutes to an hour to get wrapped up here. However, I had found out that the University bus that the class had for the week that was going to transport the rest of the crew to set was stuck in traffic somewhere between Bristol and Weston-Super-Mare. Even though that technically meant that we could afford some extra time at the pier, I stilled believed that we should stick to the original plan of getting done by 9. To kill the suspense a little, we did.
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You could pretty much class this Tuesday as one in which was focused on sorting everything out. Catering is an underappreciated area of filmmaking for students, so it was something that was important to not fail at. It keeps the morale up of both cast and crew. It was also beneficial timewise to also get the shots of the location where the actors weren’t required. This meant that on the days in which we did have the actors, we could put all the focus on them. We had also gone over the script breakdowns I had done so we could make a shopping list for what was needed for each scene. I feel like I massively benefited from getting this experience of time management. This is an area which I targeted as an area I need to borderline perfect when it came to the role of assistant director. To save time and money down the line on future projects I need to always be thinking of how to get the most out of a shooting day. Especially when it came to utilising the time in which there is not much going on. This whole idea of keeping the metaphorical wheels turning on set would be something I aimed to keep up with the remaining days while on set. As the day came to a close, I remembered to check all the pieces of equipment we had taken out. From sound to visual. This turned out to be a smart idea as we had found out that there was an issue with compatibility with the lenses from the Samyang kit and Liv’s Sony A7iii camera. When attaching these specific lenses, a vignette had been created. This was an issue but not one that couldn’t be solved by simply using the other camera we had booked out. Liv had planned for her film to have a ‘The Fosters’ inspired title sequence to it. This consisted on getting little bits of footage around the house. Even breaking out the track and dolly at a few points (I’ll talk about this at a later point).
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Above - Me and Liv filming the title sequence on Tuesday
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As you can see in the picture to the left, this was our set up. We had the director on the camera that was attached to the dolly. Someone holding a pole made out of the extra parts of the dolly track that would assist the actor in pushing the doors open. Of screen right is where I decided a good place to put the microphone. We had experimented with Meg (who was on sound) positioned outside, then inside and then behind the camera. There were issues with all these options, so I had the idea we would prop the mic up against a plant pot and have Meg hit the record button on the Zoom device and then run behind the camera. Barring one take in which I walked backwards straight into a door; this was the most successful method.
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A few weeks later after wrapping up on the final day we had planned to record some voice overs with one of the actresses. I asked if I could come along as I thought it would be valuable for me to learn how to record things like this for future projects. Not only can you record voice overs, like we were doing this time, but you can also use this set up for when recording ADR. ADR stands for ‘Automated Dialogue Replacement’ and can be valuable for certain situations. As this is not applicable to what we did on this day, I won’t go into it. We had used a recording studio that the university had to get several lines of dialogue from the actor, Olivia. The program that was recommended to us by the music technician was ‘Pro Tools’. After he had set it up for us, it was all very easy to use. Because of this, I would say I have confidence in myself to record audio this way for future projects. |
A thing I liked about this set was that everyone on it was very friendly which meant that we got through a lot of the shooting schedule rather quickly. As this was more of a performance piece, the day had mainly consisted of going through the song multiple times from different angles. A huge benefit from filming at this specific location was that there was a control panel at the back of the room that could change the colour of the stage at a press of the button. The original plan had been to bring our own lights and set them up accordingly. The fact we had access to the stage lights saved so much time and effort in between takes. The shots had been pretty straightforward throughout the first half of filming as it was mostly covering all the shots of Ryan performing his solo.
After this first half, we had put together a set up to capture a section of the video that Ryan wanted everyone to do a voiceover for a quote that was played about three quarters through the song. In this monologue, we wanted to just film from the bridge of the nose to about the neck. This meant you could see the mouth moving with the words but there was still some ‘anonymity’ to it. In retrospect, we probably shouldn’t have set the frame on me first. I ended up being the tallest person on set that day so almost everyone that went after me had to stand on a box to be level where I had been. This wasn’t a huge issue at all and if anything, a bit funny with asking people to get on the box. |
Above & Below - Filming the monologue section.
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The main issue I had encountered while editing this music video was that it was guitar heavy. This was a problem for me. When someone sings, you can see their mouth move with the words. When the drums are played, you can see every hit of the drumstick. These are both very easy to sink up. I haven’t got much knowledge on guitars, so I had to learn a bit. The first thing I found out was there is ‘melodic guitar’ and a ‘rhythm guitar’. This explained why he kept swapping guitars. As I had found it hard to sync up the guitar pieces of footage, I had try to find a way that would work for me. I would sync up the song from the speaker that the camera had recorded with the file of the song that I had been sent by Ryan. There were moments in the song where the drums were played with much gusto and I had just used them moments to sync up all surrounding footage. This had been quite the time consumer, but I was glad when I had finished it. I think it might have shown that I had had a much easier time with the drummers footage as I had used that quite generously throughout the music video. |
Love this shirt.
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After a few weeks had gone by, Will had finished it all up. I was also quite worried that we were getting closer and closer to when he had originally planned to film his project. He seemed quite far off where a normal film production would want to be at. I had asked him a few separate questions about the film just to softly let him know that I was concerned that not everything was going to be ready in time. Such questions like ‘How many actors were needed?’ normally followed by ‘How many actors have you confirmed?’. The number for the latter were always less than the prior. I had voiced my concerns privately with Liv that I wasn’t sure it was going to be ready and she had agreed. I didn’t want his good idea to go to waste or only be partly done so I had set up a meeting with Will and Liv to basically talk him down from the metaphorical ledge of trying to do a five person film with only three actors.
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The next few weeks had gone past quite quickly which meant that the first day of filming felt like it had really snuck up on me. Unfortunately, I was unavailable for the very first day due to other commitments with Liv’s film (see the Journal Entry 7, second to last paragraph to see what I was doing). However, we had received a message from Will in our little side chat that he needed some help with setting the Sony Fs7. It was cutting it close as I had to be elsewhere very soon, but I thought that the whole point of this chat was for Will to ask for help so when he did it would be quite the let down to not do something. Especially something as easy as setting up the Fs7. I had also thought to myself that I had shown quite the progression in being a camera operator. It was something I had found easy to do as I had so much experience with it while being on set. This was almost a target ticked off for me. At the beginning of the year, I probably would’ve been quite unsure about what lens to set the camera up with for Will. The fact that I set it up with ease meant I had actually learnt from such projects as the ‘Lens Test’ for Journal Entry 2. I think this is what the essence of the P.D.P was meant to be? Becoming a better filmmaker so you’ll be more ready for post-University/industry. Right Top - BTS shot Right Bottom - What I lack in sight, I'm blessed with height |
We had managed to get every shot that was needed from this scene. The only issue I had encountered was that it had been particularly bright that day. That meant that any shot that was going into the sun was causing the characters to silhouette. I had tried my best to avoid that happening. However, if you are filming at this type of location, it’s nice to utilise the 360° view it gives you. After we finished here, I suggested we all went and got lunch as I had looked over the plan that day and didn’t feel like we had any other opportunities to eat. It had suggested that we go to Spoons I knew they had plug sockets there and I had noticed that the batteries were running quite low. This might also be our only opportunity to get some form of charge before we complete the final scene. |