(Shoot week schedule)
What want well and what didn't go so well is summarised in this vlog video I captured during the shooting week. I felt by doing these video's it would help me summarise easier what I felt worked and didn't work throughout the day and what could of went better. I've tried to assess my own work and speak about others in the team that I felt worked well/didn't work so well.
(Vlog day post-shoot 3)
Scene's filmed on this day - Scene 4, 15, 16, 20
WHAT -
This was no doubt the hardest shoot day of the week, even though we haven't filmed the last 3 days, I just know that this was the most challenging because of how many scenes we were doing and also the content of scene 20. Scene 20 was the penguin scene which involved lots of logistical energy, as we needed to shoot the whole scene with Graham not dressed as a penguin first, remembering to capture every single shot with her not being a penguin, then to quickly get her changed and into the penguin costume, ready for shooting the whole scene again but as her being a penguin. Not only was this scene quite difficult to pull off but also we had scene 4 which was the pub scene. Now this scene at first didn't appear to be an issue but once we rocked up to the location, Will completely froze, not really knowing what to do, so I used my initiative, set up around a table that Callum had selected and I kind of just directed that scene. I think we may have to reshoot as I'm thinking back now and I may of potentially broke the 180 degree rule, we'll have to see but hopefully if I have, we can figure a way out of fixing it in the edit. Scene 15 and 16 were relatively easy scenes, we had to however get Aimee to put graphics on some webcam footage that would be used for scene 16, (Graham's room) as she would be watching them on the 'live' stream. So that needed to be complete before we could actually start scene 16. So we did run over into lunch time slightly to just get that scene sorted as the graphics weren't ready until around lunch time, and I wanted to get it shot as soon as really because I knew the penguin scene was after lunch and I wanted as much time as possible on that sequence.
LIGHTING/FRAMING/MOVEMENT/SETTING DECISIONS
For the pub scene, I wanted to balance the vast amount of light blasting through the window by countering it with using the LED lights on the Sam and Graham's other side. I felt I managed this quite effectively and it didn't look to jarring, in fact I felt the light for this sequence was probably the best i've filmed yet. I wanted to give this scene a more natural look because of it's natural setting, I thought it would go hand in hand. Because the table was against the wall, when I went over the shoulder of Sam I had to move all of the lighting kit behind Sam to blast onto Graham, this technique was used throughout the whole scene, so I made sure to save time and energy, to shoot the entirety of the sequence from Sam's perspective first, getting all the coverage I need, then move onto shoot from Sams. This worked out to be a very good plan to stick to in regards to all of the shooting days. Following on from the shot list, we wanted this scene to be quite tight and nippy, so when it came to the edit it should be nice to play around with. So I shot an establishing shot of the pub, which would be our entering shot, then starting on a medium shot of Sam. I made sure to get close ups of both Sam and Graham to really emphasise the hatred they hold for one another. This scene didn't really need a shotlist as it was really easy to follow the conflict and what to record. I made sure the my rule of thirds and macro image was set on the camera as again I wanted to capture really crisp, beautiful and symmetrical visuals of all of these scenes. This brings me onto scene 16, this scene was quite difficult because we were meant to be creating Graham's room, which is meant to be quite a dark place. So to try and capture that and portray it visually, I restricted myself to just one LED light, placed it in the corner of the room on a very dim strength, used a reflector to beam some extra light on to her face without having to increase the brightness of the LED from the source. I tried to get some coverage of the blinds being shut, to really emphasise the lack of light coming in and being presented. This is a scene which I utilised the point of view shot, as I used the camera as the laptop, so we had Graham stare down the lens barrel. This is because from research, sitcoms often use the point of view shot to heighten the comedy of a scene and it also adds shock factor.
The lighting for scene 20 was similarly set to how it had been for the majority of our kitchen scenes, however we did dim down the LEDs only because it had hit around the 1/1:30pm mark and the sun shines through the back door, completely filling the room, and you'll be able to see in the edit that the actors are blown out. Unfortunately there was nothing about this that could be done, it creatively wasn't what we wanted but we had to live with it. I decided with will that it'd be best to approach this scene handheld to add to the chaotic/anarchy tone of the scene, really reinforcing the fact that it's the meltdown of a trip, also trying to give the audience the perspective of the boys, to really live through their experience of this wild trip. This leads me onto the framing for this sequence, it was mainly medium to medium close up shots of the characters, really wanting to avoid the use of the master shot in this as it's quite a extreme situation to be in, so to create that sense of madness I gathered quite a lot of close ups from each of the characters perspective so that Aimee had a lot of manipulate in the edit. For this scene I did have to change my camera settings slightly, I went to the auto-focus instead of manual, as I was acting from the perspective of Sam, and he turns around to face this monster, so I thought it'd be to utilise this tool. Another interesting technique we decided to use, was the crash zoom. Will had thought to use it after seeing it utilised in the sitcom 'Its Alway's Sunny In Philadelphia' and it captures the audiences attention in a completely nuanced way than to a generic cut. We used the crash zoom on the monster, to heighten the anarchic experience the boys were having, and it adds pace to the scene which is already incredible fast with juicy action.
In regards to all of my other camera settings for this day, i.e the rule of thirds, colour histogram etc, I kept them the same as I'm trying to capture a consistent aesthetic throughout and I feel these tools really aid me in doing that.
ISO - 100
Shutter Speed - 1/60
White Balance - 5000K
UNGRADED
Static
ISO - 100
Shutter Speed - 1/60
White Balance - 5000K
UNGRADED
Static
ISO - 200
Shutter Speed - 1/60
White Balance - 5000K
UNGRADED
Static
f/OPEN
ISO - 400
Shutter Speed - 1/60
White Balance - 5000K
UNGRADED
Static
WHAT I LEARNT & EVALUATION
- It was our first use of the crash zoom and I think we utilised it well, and we will be using it more frequently after this experience.
- It was really good being on location and working with such a big team that day, as we had other crew members join us to help out on it as it was scheduled to be are biggest day yet.
- there was difficulty to make a room look dark, but also to try and keep a persons face well lit, so I think that's a skill that i'll need to keep working on.
- I'm getting to grips more with the camera as each day goes on which is a huge benefit to our project. I feel i'm only getting better with it.
- Tempers did rise however when Callum and Aimee left, between myself, Andrew and Will. I've explained this in the vlog but I felt some people weren't taking this process seriously and thought we'd wrap at 4pm every day.
- Overall, having completed this day, I now have faith in completing this shoot week as from here on it's easier than today, in terms of the amount of scenes and the blocking of them!
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