(Captain Hindsight property of South Park)
Upon my last diary post, I mentioned how I had brought together a team of specialised yet not so specialised individuals and that I had set a date for such a daring adventure as shooting this 3 minute short.
WELL THAT DATE IS TODAY MY FRIENDS!
.......well its actually Friday 30th May.......
BUT NONE THE LESS!
Today we had the enjoyable experience to have everything organised and ready to shoot. However, some on the dot field decisions had to be made to accomodate certain..... hinderances.
This is a lesson you learn on every shoot. That you could have always done things better. Hindsight is a great thing isn't it?
In any case, the shooting began at around 1.30pm (1 hour off schedule) which was duely my fault for poor transport planning. But on set we had 7 people which included:
2 Actors (counting one as director)
1 Assistant director
1 Camera and Sound Operator
1 Make-up artist
1 Set Design
1 Random person (runner maybe)
That one random person was just someone who happened to be on the set at the same time and ended up helping out.
For this case, we began by doing make-up on the actors while shooting some green screen footage. it was all simple movements that took no less than 10 mins.
After this we began talking about the plan for what was going to happen during the shoot (shots, scenes, etc.)
One of our actors had to go before everyone else, so we had the make-up of the carving in skin done during the discussion.
Here is a picture of the make-up work:
And here it is quickly edited cause I want to so stop asking questions :-p
We were ready to begin shooting but then....
DISASTER STRUCK!
The cameraman didn't know how to operate the camera and sound equipment attached we had got.
(Face palm)
Now obviously he knew how to operate a camera and get nice visuals, but I had never briefed him on what camera and sound we were using. Especially when it came to sound, he didn't know what the equipment operated like. So this took about 20 mins to explain and make sure he knew how to operate the exposure and such.
After this step back, we began shooting scenes that required the actor that needed to go away early. It took us a while to get fully into it, but we all worked well as a team.
Because I was acting, I relied on my Cameraman to get what I wanted and my AD's judgement to see if it was the artistic style of what we had discussed earlier. I did ask to see some of the shots afterward, but they were able to get what I had wanted within restrictions that were set.
The lighting was one of the first problems. The lighting was a tiny bit too strong for the camera at points, so we had to constantly edit the shutters and such to help with trying to make the lighting look as good as possible.
I should have taken the time to rent out lighting kits and blackout curtains or just black card. This would have given us more control over the lights and would have just made things more dramatic with lighting.
Moving on, we were able to move into it rather quickly and the first few shots were able to be done well with everyone in a good mood. This would have probably been because of the relaxed mood and especially because Hope (our Set Design) brought out loads of munchable sweets and goodies for everyone to munch away from which I would particularly like to thank her for.
I'll have to note to bring some sort of compensation for our set design in the future. Plus, something else to note is that snacks make everyone happy. BRING THEM!
We pushed on and we all got into the swing of things, getting the shots we needed and by the time the actor needed to go, we were done with that part. However, this is where things began to go downhill.
When he left, we realised that we only had 1 hour and 30 mins left to do the rest of the shoot. I thought that because of the time it took to do only 1/3 of the actual movie, we would need to either speed things up or cut the film down.
Now even though before I had thought we would need to cut it down in editing anyway, it would have been good to have that footage to play about with anyway in editing to see if there was anyway of improving the overall production with that footage.
But even after I decided this, our make-up artist needed to go home and the Camera operator had a bus in 1 hour 15 mins. In order to help accomodate the crew's needs, the AD took her home. Because of this, I decided the rest of us should have a small break for two reasons:
1. I needed to figure out what shots to throw out to get the production done quicker.
and
2. The Camera's battery died so we had to let it charge for a bit to get it working again.
If I had gotten an extra battery before the shoot, this could have been avoided and also if I had organised the shoot at either a different date or earlier time I could have avoided losing some of my crew early.
After a bit of break and when the AD got back, we decided to get to work, now with 1 hour left.
Upon this set back of time, quite a few shots were scrapped and even more set backs when our AD took the Camera Operator to the bus stop.
While he was there, I pressed on with my remaining 2 crew members and got the rest of the shots before the AD came back.
After the AD came back, we starting packing up. It was all going fine until when I got to packing away the green screen. This is when I realised:
"I don't know how to fold a green screen"
(Characters property of Star Trek: The Next Generation)
After about 15 mins of trying to fold the green screen with the rest of the crew, we eventually resorted to watching a Youtube tutorial. But even with that it still took us 10 more mins to fold it down.
The thing is, I have used a green screen before. It's just that I didn't take the time to practice at home with this new green screen I had bought.
(Super Mario property of Nintendo)
After this ordeal, we headed home.
Now truth be told, I wouldn't call it an ordeal, I actually had a lot of fun and I believe the others did too. It was all experience and it was all laid back till the very end where everyone was tired. This has pretty much just ended up as an essay about what could have gone better during the shoot. Now I bet there is more errors yet to come when the editing begins, but so far so good. and besides that, I now have 6 days to finish this 3 minute short for the competition end.
HAS PROFKRANC FINALLY MET HIS MATCH? FIND OUT ON THE NEXT BLOG POST OF....
To be Continued......
RANDOM VIDEO TIME!!
