I found this week’s Tuesday class particularly interesting, as for the first time we all worked as one big group, each with a specific role to fulfill. We were re-shooting a scene that we had undertaken in smaller groups the previous week, which made the two different sets easily comparable to each other.

In theory, one would think that many hands make light work. It seemed that we would be able to get the filming done relatively quickly, as everyone would be able to concentrate specifically on their job without having to multi-task. This also meant that the time taken to set up equipment had the potential to be reduced, as everything could be set up at the same time, rather than setting up the tripod, then the camera, then moving onto the sound equipment and so on.

Overall, however, the two different shoots seemed to take a similar amount of time. With a larger crew, there was a lot of time spent bouncing ideas off one another, and the communication process amongst one another was relatively slow. Working with less people on the previous task meant that we were able to easily raise and mend concerns without having to yell across the room at one another or wait until the person we needed to speak with was finished resolving issues with five other people. Working in groups of about five or six meant that we could identify a problem, and immediately communicate to the person responsible for that area what needed to be done to fix it, or even help to make the change ourselves.

I think it will be interesting to compare the footage of each shoot to one another. Although the process of filming with a bigger crew may have felt slower, it is quite possible that the quality of what is produced will be higher. Because we were each able to focus on our own task, it is likely that we had more time to make minor modifications to picture or sound quality, resulting in a better final product.