Shoot Number 1

Written by Emma Taylor

We are shooting four of our scenes at our school, and have organised to shoot this on Thursday 31st August, during half term. We did this so there would be no distractions from others using the school in the day, and we could use our actors as planned. The difficulty with this however, is that we need extras, to make the school look alive - not something that can easily be done, considering it's half term and many people are on holiday. Despite this, we found willing volunteers from the local stage school, Valley Academy to help us out. 

1st Shoot - Graded Rushes from Emma Taylor on Vimeo.

Pre-Shoot

As director, preparation is key to a successful shoot, as there is so much going on, and many questions being asked by various different people including the cast and crew, and this can sometimes be difficult to manage and so good preparation is needed to make the day run as quickly and effectively as possible. Shot and prop lists were made along with getting and preparing all the equipment to be taken to the shoot, and making sure all the procedures were in place to make sure we could shoot at school and have all the rooms we needed access to, to be open.

With the main planning in place prior to the shoot, running through the day and how it's going to pan out the night before the shoot is crucial. So as well as printing out all the scripts, shot lists ect. I made plans on how to brief both the cast and crew. (Order of shooting the scenes, who's required at what points, to turn phones off ect.)

Writing everything down and knowing exactly what you plan to do in the day, is crucial, as everyone asking what they should do at the same time, can be overwhelming, so I wrote every last detail in my black directing book to reference back to. I found this useful when shooting, and I made sure I didn't miss anything we needed. 

As I had all the equipment we needed; clapper board, lights and stands, reflector, camera, tripod, boom, headphones, dolly, tracks, sound recorder, microphones, batteries, 4 SD cards, and extension cables, all of this needed to be loaded and set up prior to the actors getting to the set, in order for minimal 'waiting' around. 

Going through noter for the shoot the next day

During Shoot

Overall, I think the shoot went very well. I felt happy with all the shots and sound we had, and we even finished earlier than anticipated, and gave our actors sufficient brakes. (I bought some food and made sandwiches for all the cast and crew to have during the breaks).

I felt that some of the shots were challenging, such as the corridor scene where there were 2 movements which needed to be conducted; tracking backwards on the dolly and also focus pulling to make sure the three main actors were constantly in focus. Even though we did the exact same thing (focus pulling and tracking) in other sections such as the classroom scene, I found the positioning of the former scenario difficult, and as the actors are half out of focus, it is likely that this will be cut from the final cut of our A2 Trailer production.

Another challenge we found, was that one of our crew members, Saqib didn't attend this shoot, and so we had to do our own and his jobs as well, which was a lot of pressure and I had many different roles to think about. For example, I had to set up the camera settings, think about health and safety with lighting (making sure it wasn't too hot ect) look after the actors, direct, fulfil the role of producer, set up all the equipment, check for continuity, use the reflector and clapper board and oversee all the other parts of production. Whilst I enjoy doing all the different aspects of production stated above, it's a lot of pressure to do your own work and another person's, but despite this, all the different aspects of production ran smoothly. 

Abi and I setting up for the shoot with the dolly

Directing the sound and action

Abi and I setting up my Canon 6D

Abi and I checking the tracking corridor shot

Tom recording diegetic sound from the corridor scene

Working photo of the classroom scene

Abi on the clapper and me focusing up

Looking at the composition of shots with the reflector working in the background

Starting to film 

During filming

During filming

filming for the last scene of the day

I set the camera settings to more or less the same for each shot, as we had a constant light source (white LED Panel film light). We filmed on my Canon 6D with a full frame lens. The shutter speed at 320, the aperture at 2.8 and the ISO at 1250, which worked really well in our conditions.

Post shoot

Straight after coming home from the shoot and putting all the equipment away, I downloaded all the rushes (footage) and the sound off the SD cards in my camera and recording equipment onto the editing suite (Final Cut Pro) and started to edit the work. This included syncing all the sound to lip movements (helped by the clapper board stating the scene and roll), cutting and adding transitions to the footage, colour grading, and cropping the frame to give the effect of an anamorphic lens.