PRODUCTION • Shoot Day 1

Monday 19th February - 

We started Monday morning with a few problems, one of these being that we didn’t have any lighting equipment to use. Although we had planned to use majority natural lighting, the day was very dark and although overcast which is preferable to bright sunlight, it was not enough light in the rooms we were filming in to illuminate the backgrounds and the subjects. This initially set us back as we then had to take time out to travel to the studios and retrieve some lights for which we had to take out tungstens as the LED kit and Rotolight hadn't been returned to the store yet. This created a few issues for us in that we have never tested out the tungsten lights in our location before we would had no idea how they would look and if they're create the desired effect. 

When we arrived back to the location, myself and my camera assistant Andreya started to set up the cameras and light along with the help of our runner George and sound operator Jemma. Together we managed to get our cameras set up with our pre-chosen setting which really helped as it sped up the process. As a team we worked quickly 

The Arri lights have a very yellow hue to them so due to the fact we were trying to imitate daylight, we needed to correct this. We tried some blue colour correcting gels however these were too much and made the shots look very cold. We decided to direct the lights towards the ceiling and bounce the light rather than having a harsh spotlight on our characters. This helped to reduce some of the yellowness of light as it wasn’t as direct and also helped with the brightness of the lights as unlike the LED kits, there is not way to electronically adjust the brightness or temperature with a button or dial. We added on some ND filters which again helped somewhat with the brightest of the light; Using a scrim in the lights added another filter to them. 

This set up took the most time throughout the course of the day, and caused us to start filming 30 minutes behind our planned time. I found it difficult to replicate the look that we wanted with the tungstens however, we achieved a look that the director and I agreed could be colour corrected during the post-production stage of the  project as we had used all our options and tools we had to fix the issues we were encountering. 

Although we started our shoot behind schedule, we managed to make the time back by all the technical crew being pro-active and efficient in getting kit sorted and positioned and during camera resets and communicating to each other if there was an issue or if someone had a question. 

Due to there being more people of set then we’d ever had before, it was really important for me to take into consideration the safety of everyone. Due to the Arri lights needing to be attached to a power supply and not moving off batteries, this added to the amount of cables around and therefore added to our list of hazards. As part of my role, Andreya and I went around making sure that all the cables were out of the way so that no one could easily trip on them. We weren’t able to tape them to the floor in our location we had to tuck them to the sides against the walls and just made everyone aware that there were many pieces of equipment around and cables to be careful. 

Laura had allocated a room for us to keep all of our equipment which meant that if we were not using something we could out them all in this room out of the way which again reduced any hazards of people tripping over unattended equipment but also meant that we could easily find things again as everything was always put back into this room. 

During lunch times, all footage from the mornings shoot was taken off the cameras and out onto the hard drive where we would be keeping all of our footage, this then allowed us the change to watch through the footage from the morning and make sure that we had everything we wanted, check for anything that needed to be re-shot or any GV’s that we could add in just so that we had everything we could possible want to see and need during the edit stage. This also allowed us to listen through the sound and make sure that we were happy with that as well as we know that sound is really important part of the process.

Overall I feel as though the first day of filming went very well and I feel as though our team worked effectively and professionally. I definitely found some things that worked well like having George, Jemma and Andreya help set up the equipment in the morning and help with the de-rig after we wrapped was really helpful and made the process going really quickly, and then there were some aspects that we planned that didn’t quite work such as the short time we were scheduled to set up for the afternoon shoot, this took longer than the time we were scheduled so we knew for the next days I would cut down my lunch break down and start the set up slightly earlier so that we would hopefully be more likely to be ready on time to shoot at the scheduled time. 

I feel that despite not having all our equipment to begin with due to some booking confusions, we did well to get ourselves back on time and focus on the task at hand. All of our crew were extremely helpful and were a huge asset to the team. For the next few shoot days, in terms of my role, I want to make sure that I am doing everything I can in terms of making sure we are set up and ready to go so that our actors aren't made to stand around and wait for us. Also to make sure that I am really accurate and tuned into to all the camera settings in order to make sure when we complete our multi camera sections, all three cameras are matched up as close as possible and that I have done everything I can do achieve that.