Skip to main content

3rd Year Production Unit: Helping on another shoot

For a few days over the past two weeks, I have been helping another group with shoots for their project. The first one of these was in in Strood, so was easy for me to travel to by train. I knew that we were filming a test shoot, which would be some interviews, but I did not know what the location was going to be like, other than it being a workshop. When I got to the location, i saw that it was a workshop for building racing cars, and the people at the garage were actually building a car for Alex, the director of the group I am helping, as the film they are doing is a documentary about Alex becoming a race car driver. We had a look around the workshop and decided where would be best to have the interviews, and then proceeded to conduct the interviews. I was on one of the cameras, and had to get a medium shot of Alex, who was the interviewee. We did several takes of the questions that the group had prepared, and it went very well. 

Next, we needed to get some footage of Alex getting into his car, so this part was more handheld footage, whereas the interviews were shot using a camera on a tripod. This allowed us to use the whole space of the workshop to get some good angles of the car. however, we had to be careful when moving around the garage as there were a few things that we could have walked into, such as a rear axel that was poking out a bit, and a table that was in front of some stairs, which I was able to go up onto the second floor and get some arial pictures of Alex in the car. 


In total, the whole shoot took a few hours, which was about the amount of time that George, the producer of the group, had thought it would take. We managed to get a lot of good shots, and this will definitely help the group when they come to film at this location for the real thing.  



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Pre-production: Locations

I have been able to secure access to the Holy Trinity Church in Sittingbourne to be the main location of my documentary, as this is where the Lunch Club is held, and is the Church where many of the volunteers go. In order to secure this location, I spoke with the person who runs the club, Pauline, as well as the Vicar, and they were both happy to let me make my documentary there, and to also do a test shoot. I have managed to secure a couple of other locations as well. They are both the homes of two of the volunteers at the club. The first one that I secured is the house of a woman called Barbie, and she is the person who got my nan interested in the Lunch club. I wanted to interview her as she was close to my nan, and has also been volunteering at the club for a long time. she lives along the road from my Grandparents house, so it easily accessible. The second location is the home of another volunteer that I spoke with when I went to the club on October 31st. Her name is Penny, an...

Storytelling – Preparing and shooting news packages

News packages •These are self-contained news items. • Unlike VOs/SOTs, the news anchor need do no more than introduce the item and then wrap it up at      the end. • The reporter themselves also wraps up the story with their ‘TAG’ at the end (name, location) • The package contains the reporter usually both on camera and also their voice as “track” ( aka              VO/Comm). • Use the script as a template for structuring and guiding your edit. • Ensure you fully research what you are trying to shoot so that you are as prepared as possible. Structure and Content A good package will contain a mix of the following elements :  – Interviews, vox pops & set ups  – Sequences and actuality  – GVs/archive  – PTCs and walky talkies  – GFX It is useful to structure your piece as you might a good written piece of work:  – INTRO  – BODY OF ARGUMENT – expert opinion, stats, backgrou...

Transition Unit: Shoot Day 2 - Maidstone Studios

Our second shoot was at the Maidstone Studios in the car park. We were shooting at night for an interrogation scene, and night time would give the scene some more depth and feel.  We encountered quite a few problems during the shoot. On the day, at about 11:00, our actor who was going to be playing the villain dropped out, so we had to find someone else for a 8:00pm shoot. Fortunately, we were able to find someone by 12:30, which was a relief. The next problem we had was that as we needed it to be quite dark for our shoot, it was staying light for quite a while. due to this, we were late to start filming. This had a knock on effect with our schedule, as the actor who was playing our villain had to get a train back to London at 10:03. This problem, accompanied by some more technical problems with our equipment, forced us to cram a three hour shoot into just 50 minutes.  we just managed to do it, but if I were to do this shoot again, I would try and make sure that the equi...