Major Production - Shooting a Short Project - DOP EXP

As I was still in Manchester before my major production began, I was asked by my Mum to create a short piece for one of her friends retiring at her work. She was a teacher, who had actually taught me when I was in year 4/5/6. The project was only a little fair well gift so that she could have something to keep after she left. The concept was to film the teachers playing on musical instruments that they had no idea of how to play, but having music dubbed over the top, (Music recording from actual students playing the instruments first, correctly) to make it look as if the teachers had learnt to play these instruments, as the retiring teacher had supposedly always wanted the teachers to play the steel pans for her as a farewell present.

WHAT
Teachers pretending to play the steel pans, with music dubbed over the top of the visuals, recorded from the students playing.

(Mrs.Wilde's Avoir)  

EQUIPMENT LIST
Sony A7S
Sony FE f/1.8 50mm
Rode Mic
Mini Manfrotto Tripod



METHODOLOGY
So I listened to what the teachers wanted to have within the video, they thought it would be best to have two separate scenes recorded, of teachers from key stage one and key stage two posing as if they were playing the songs. So before this, I had to record the sound from the kids playing first, so I set up my camera and mic and placed it on a table in front of the steel pan group. I had a pair of headphones with me to check the levels were right, but as my lens was a fixed 50mm, it was hard to get everyone in without being at quite a lengthy distance to the sound, so the sound was negatively effected by this. Once I gathered the sound from the kids recording, I then got the key stage one teachers into the hall. I started with a static long shot of the teachers (camera placed on the mini-tripod), this would be the master shot which I'd always cut back to, holding the piece together. I recorded them attempting to play the song from the long shot for about 2 minutes, as I felt that would be enough coverage from that specific angle to last throughout the edit. After this, I knew all that was needed now were a combination of mid shots, mid-close ups, close ups and extreme close ups. I started with the mid shots and worked myself through the shots until I felt I had enough. I had my camera on manual focus, as it gave the camera movement and the real-action music acting more of an authentic feel, hopefully leaving the teacher not questioning the validity of the other teachers actually playing. All of the medium shots/medium-close ups/close ups and other angles were handheld, as since working on Jools Holland, watching live performances through the handheld angle gives the audience more of an engagement to the piece that you wouldn't get with any other angle, it allows for more of a authentic and engrossing experience. Coming towards the end of recording the key stage one teachers, I now felt less anxious about what I needed to shoot for the next group of teachers, so for the oncoming key stage two teachers, the process of filming was much more efficient and composed. I literally copied my process of filming onto key stage one to the key stage two teachers and I was done. I took all the footage back about an hour after filming and began the editing process. I was stuck however when it came to the ending, as there wasn't really a way to close this project without it being slightly jarring, so I spoke to one of the teachers who organised this and came up with an idea that she'd do a little piece to camera, before the steel pans commence and at the end of the sequence, to tie up the loose ends. I went in and recorded it the next day, and then got a quick snap of outside the building and of the flag waving, to give us myself for coverage to edit and give it more of a professional tone. 


WHAT I LEARNT - HOW IT EFFECTED MY APPROACH TO THE PROJECT
So I did this piece after my brother's wedding which was beneficial as I felt slightly more pressure with capturing this piece more so than my brother's wedding (for some strange unexplainable reason). This gave me way more confidence than I had before, and left me feeling pretty comfortable going into this situation in terms of what footage I would need to record for this project and how to do it i.e what angles would be ideal for this piece. However there were obviously a lot of things that went wrong and when coming back to the edit the realisation of missing certain shots and not being able to record again, being left powerless, an to try and come up with a way of finishing it with the footage that you have. In many ways after completing this piece it allowed me to focus clearly on my final project, in the sense that I knew the things that I needed to avoid, but also it brought to the forefront of my mind what I need to do to produce a piece of work that's cinematically engaging. One clear error is the focusing issue I had with creating this piece, as it was handheld and constantly moving I had to concentrate on the focus ring, which is quite an irritating piece of machinery on the Sony's as it's very temperamental. This issue has really made me question using handheld, and if I do decide to use this movement technique i'll have to be extremely diligent and focused when utilising. I'd probably use auto-focus as well if I were to go handheld, this would simply be for the fact that it'd be less complicated to manage recording a sequence with less things to focus on whilst filming. In addition, this experience made me think a lot about the sound of a project and how pivotal it is, as my rode mic was placed on top of the camera it picked up a lot of movement sound and significant banging noises produced from the objects hitting one another. This has lead me to believe that when it comes to the actual filming of our piece, it'd be best if we had the sound and the camera separate, so that we would make this potential error obsolete.

Another issue with this short project is that I didn't have any external lights, so I had to make best with the natural lighting and interior lights that the school had. Fortunately the colour grade wasn't a mega issue as I had auto-white balance selected for the shoot, and with Sony's built in codec's their AWB is really exceptional. However I still wasn't happy with the overall blue/browny tones coming through, I know that the environment that I filmed in definitely had an impact for that but I felt with proper lighting equipment with me i'd of been able to create my own aesthetic suited for this piece. This definitely had an effect on my mindset towards the lighting of our final project, in terms of approaching the set up and the floor space i'd have to fill the location we'd be filming in. It focused my approach by making me realise that their are so many external things out of my control that i'll have to take into consideration. It made me appreciate all of the other roles of my team, the sound man, director and editor, as I took on all of these tasks, I was able to see from their perspective how this major project is going to be completed through their eyes.  Overall this experience like the wedding shoot gave me a lot more confidence in terms of my ability, attention to detail and focus on set, so going into my final project I feel much more rounded that I did before. I know what mindset to have, to not rush things, to be patient and use my initiative if I feel we could do a scene better, have to speak up and communicate with Will and Andrew that I want to reshoot this particular scene because of x, y and z.