Literally.

This studio has been a crazy ride. But what it makes so rewarding (apart from getting back into filming, making a bunch of new friends, making two episodes of a web series and a gaining a lot of new insights) is seeing the progress that’s happened over the past couple of months.

It was like driving through a levelled road with no bumps so it was pretty bleak, but then you reach a downhill so you’re obviously going down. But once you reach the bottom, you know that you can only go up from there.

And that’s exactly what we did.

After the pilot presentations, which looking back wasn’t actually as bad as I thought at the time, we set up a fairly low bar for us to get over. That’s not to say that we didn’t face any hurdles this time around, because we definitely did, like sorting out scheduling and securing locations. It’s just that this time around, our group dynamic just got stronger from the aftermath of the pilot episode and we became so much more organised that things were actually happening like we hoped it would. We ended up being able to make two episodes in the very limited time we had, and for both episodes, I was the cinematographer and also the camera operator. I knew what being a cinematographer entailed, but when you actually do it while doubling as the camera operator and working in collaboration with others on a production set, you definitely learn a couple of things.

Doubling up as a camera operator wasn’t particularly hard considering I was the cinematographer and I also did the shot list so I basically knew the shots way before filming. But on a technical perspective, there were a few things that I had to keep in mind to ensure visual continuity. By this, I mean taking care of the basics on camera – ISO, aperture, shutter speed. Changing one of these means changing the rest because it does affect picture quality, especially ISO (but since we had some pretty good lighting, it was easy to maintain filming on a low ISO). The most important one I had to keep an eye out for was aperture. Considering the amount of medium/close ups and over-the-shoulder shots we had, I applied mainly shallow DoF. But then when we had wide to long shots, I obviously had to change that, but only sparingly because we seldom had them and it would be a little jarring if the shots would cut from a shallow DoF, medium shot of someone then to a deep DoF, wide shot.

Now onto other things.

Firstly, lighting. That was something that I had to make sure I was always on top of because lighting is an element that can differentiate a good image from a bad one. It also makes it harder to edit accordingly in post-production if you don’t get it right. Seeing as the windows were all on one side of the room, I had to make sure it balances out and looks nicely on camera. And sometimes it was a little bit tough considering the natural light would always change and we couldn’t just open or close the blinds depending on the shot because of continuity. Another thing that I had to keep a look out for was its reflection, especially on people’s hair. The actresses, having long, silky hair, meant that some light would be reflected. But thankfully, having the windows as the main light source, it looks convincingly enough to be coming from them and not the light source next to them.

Secondly, working on set. Something that was a little bit of a challenge at first, but then very insightful for me was knowing to stick to my role. There were obviously moments where I wanted to say something but not being the director or first AD, it wasn’t my role to speak up. I wasn’t really used to that so being able to practice that and practice the hierarchal nature of a production set was a good experience for me. I still obviously gave my suggestions and requests but did so in whispers and during the break to the director or first AD to maintain my place. I think that it was good to know where you stand on set because it helps to know what your job is and what isn’t, so you learn to not overstep on someone else’s job.

There were definitely a lot more things that I learned from this production, and they’re mostly on collaboration with the screenwriters, the actors, and of course, the crew (aka The Dream Team). This is the first time I worked with writers and actors that I didn’t know personally, or even on an acquaintance or friend-of-a-friend level. I am definitely super thankful of the writers that we had as they were incredibly considerate of us and what we were capable of achieving in a limited time frame. As a crew, we obviously chose to step away from having creative contribution on writing and only made suggestions based on a production perspective. And we were lucky enough to have writers who understood that and made changes accordingly to what we could do.

To the actors, though I had very little interaction with them during filming, it was a pleasure to work with them and speak to them when I could during the break. It was good to see how they get into their element and how they handle direction that’s being given to them. And as a crew, I think we all wanted to be professional, not just for us but also for the actors, and hopefully keep them in our contacts for further projects. Something that I did pick up on on all filming days and made sure to note when I could was only doing one take. As great as the actors that we had were, and they are good at what they do and how they interpreted these characters, I personally think it would have been beneficial to do more than one take on some shots just in case. But again, not being the director, it wasn’t my call to make and the one-take shots did turn out okay. But for future reference, I highly suggest doing more than one take and giving more acting direction on how they can change it up a little bit and add more to the scene.

And now, to the episodes.

I really am happy with how they turned out and I will not get tired of saying how proud I am of us and how we have come together to really ‘bring it home’. Seeing it all put together and edited, it makes me so happy to see that not an ounce of our hard work was wasted. When I first read the scripts, it was hard for me to find a lot of humour in it. I mean, they were funny, but not as funny as I thought when reading it. But now seeing it visually and having those beats and timing of certain actions, and just how the episodes were edited overall, I can see the humour and they do make me laugh more than I thought. It does have a little bit of The Office vibe mixed with generic tv show camera styles because of all the OTS/POV shots we had. But they do work well for this series because there are a lot of conversations happening between characters. And it’s also a lot shorter than I thought, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The scripts were all around 6-7 pages long so having that translated to around 3-4 minutes is actually pretty good because it would just get boring to have them dragged out any longer than that.

With all that being said, what’s next for us?

Honestly, I’m not really sure since the school year is over and everyone is going they’re seperate ways for the summer. However, I do hope that we all come back and finish the rest of the series. There are three scripts left, making it a total of five episodes for the web series. And I think it would be great for us to finish it all seeing as though it is doable and we managed to film two episodes within a total of four days. It would be great, not just for the actors to add to their showreel, but also for us as media students. I know that a lot of us enjoyed doing this, and enjoy this kind of work, and I think it would just be good overall to finish something that we started. Obviously, we’ll have to wait and see how the next few weeks pan out, but I do have hope.

Lastly, this studio definitely was not how I thought it would be. In the beginning, it did feel pretty bleak because not much was happening for us as media students apart from the class technical exercises while the writers were trying to come up with something. But then once we got into our groups (or rather solidified ours) and we got into filming our pilot episode, that was when things started to change. Although our pilot wasn’t that good (to the point that we could only show one scene that looked semi-decent for the presentation), it was probably one of the best things to have happened to us. It showed us what we didn’t want and it gave us so many valuable lessons that we definitely learned from over the past few weeks making these two episodes. It also pushed us to be better and to be better together.

I did enjoy this studio and it was mainly because of the people I got to do it with. Without our Dream Team and the wonderfully, talented people I got to work with, all of this would not have been possible. And that also includes you, Robin. It was a pleasure being in one of your studios again.

It makes me happy to see the progress I have made over the past weeks. And, it also makes me happy ending the semester, and my second year at uni, by getting back into filming, learning a lot of new things about production and meeting an amazing group of people that I now, not only call my Dream Team, but also my friends.

And in the words of our Dream Team: ‘Team work makes the dream work’.

Stay lit.

Peace out.