PRODUCTION • Shoot Day 2

Tuesday 20th February

On Tuesday morning we received a message saying that the LED lighting kit and the Rotolight were back in the store and we could not come and collect them for our shoot. Becca, Laura and I discussed whether or not we should get them or whether we should stick with the Arri lighting kit that we had. One of my points was that we don't want the lighting to look too different as the different style of lights produce very different looks however I eventually decided that it would be beneficial to us to have both sets of different lights as the LEDs are much easier to set up and use which would hopefully intern save us some time during the set up process. 

Lighting:

For this day we had the Arri lighting kit, LED kit and the Rotolight. This gave a few different options for lighting, each giving us a different look. One of our queries was the rest of our shoot week looking too different to Monday where we had to use the Arri lights. I decided that we were going to use the LEDs as the look chosen by the director was very natural and the LEDs gave us the style of lighting much easier than the Arri lights. This also helped save some time as they are much quicker to set up and allowed me more time to focus on the cameras as this was one of our most complicated scenes. 

To light the rooms, it was important that there weren't any harsh shadows or spotlights in the backgrounds to we mostly bounced the lights off the ceiling to light the rooms and then a low brightness LED panel for added lighting onto characters faces. This was done with the lights from above pointing down to imitate natural house lighting.

Cameras:

Today was one our most challenging shoots in that we had 2 cameras filming at the same time but one of the cameras acted as the film crew's camera, so was therefore in the shot. There were also lots of different actors in this scene (including the film crew - 7 actors) which made it challenging to coordinate as everyone had to the being the right thing at the right time for the scene to work.

The film crew camera was focussed on a Jordan Hamsay character and Annie and Dean when they appeared in shot, this was supposed to capture all their facial expressions and dialogue and also Annie & Dean’s reactions to Jordan Hamsay spitting out Dean’s cookies and Marie’s arrival which are two important aspects of the script. During the post-production stage, this will be edited to look like recoding camera, with a time code and recording red dot in the corner in order to distinguish this as a different camera to the other shots of the same scene. 

Our other camera was set up on a long shot of the event, which allows us to see the film crew, Annie and Dean and Marie on screen who can’t be seen on Jordan Hamsay’s camera. This also gives an overview of the location and displays The Last Dish logos on the back of the crew's t-shirts which is the television show they are representing.

The weather for this scene wasn’t ideal although the day was overcast which meant that we had the right amount of natural lighting and didn’t have to use any LEDs for this scene, however it was raining which meant we had to protect all our equipment as we were all outside which took up quite a bit of time during the set up to make sure that everything was protected. We tied small plastic bags to the bottom of the tripod legs to stop them getting muddy in the grass which although wasn’t essential to this scene, however, would make the set up for our next scene indoors much quicker as there would be no need to clean the tripod legs, just remove the bags. We also attached a large umbrella to the tripod to cover the camera and the camera operator. This worked well and much better than our original idea of covering the camera with a big bad which was difficult pin down as the wind kept blowing it away and it made lots of rustling sounds in the rode mic attached to the camera.

Laura had allowed us the whole day to film this scene which was very useful as although we actually finished filming this scene in the morning, it meant that we could look back through the footage and sound to make sure it was as we wanted it to be and if not then we had the time to re-film and do it again in the afternoon. We also had the change to film our scene 16 which was with Annie in the dining room, and the film crew walking past the window. This worked well as we had all the crew and our Jordan Hamsay character there and available on that day. 

Sound:

After our issues with the sound on Monday, I had taken the Zoom home to see if I could fix the issue. After trying maybe different solutions, I finally got it working and this made our sound recording much easier and the set up was much smoother. The sound quality on this day was also much better than when we had to record the sound straight into the camera. Jemma was very comfortable handling the zoom and I was happy to hand over the responsibility to her, trusting her so say if there was an issue or something affecting the sound that we could adjust/change. After reviewing the sound, it was much better than Monday’s sound and we planned on using the Zoom for the rest of the week as out of it and the Tascam, this worked much better for us. 

Overall, I think this day was very successful. This was our most hectic day planned and I feel as though we handled it well, despite a few moments where there were some high tensions coming from certain members of the group, as a team we still worked quickly and professionally and got everything that we wanted to have done, complete to what I believe to be a high standard. 

WWW: Despite having to spend time waiting for the lights to arrive on set, we didn't let this ruin the day and we still found things to be setting up and working on whilst we waited. Having these was very helped and was worth the hassle of having to go and pick them up. The director and I work together well on this ay, the fact that we had 7 actors to work with, Becca was great at getting them where they needed to be and comfortable with the scene which gave me time to set up my shots whilst they were blocking through the scene. 

EBI: There were some moments during this day where I felt some unprofessionalism was displayed. There was a lack of communication between the producer and the director and me; at one point, we reset the camera for next scene which only took a minute maximum, we allowed the actors to stand inside with the door shut so that they were out of the cold weather whilst I did this. The director then went inside to tell the producer that we were ready. Becca and I stood outside waiting the the cast and crew to return however the longer we stood there, we realised that no one was coming. The producer had failed to tell us that she had given the actors time to have a break even though we were in the middle of shooting a scene. This meant that the director and I were standing out in the cold ready to shot whilst they were all inside. I wasn't happy about this as we had a lot to get done this day, lots of which wasn't multi-cam which takes up more time. Next time, I would have liked a stronger line of communication between us as the key crew members so that we could have coordinated this break after we had filmed this last shot of the scene rather than right in the middle.