To put it candidly, the way we went about organising the filming of this piece was insanely un-organised. Our group had very little discussion about very basic details like where we were shooting, the roles that we’d play in the filming etc. I realise now how much of an oversight this was on all of our parts, and I now realise how important it is to have all of these basic details ironed out before shooting. We previously decided that our main intention and investigation for this assignment would be to focus on how colour temperature and white balance effects the mood and delivery of a scene. Because I will be away for the rest of the week (including the presentation initially) we decided to film on Monday the 23rd so we could all be there for filming and try to bang up a presentation with plenty of time for Thursday. However because of our lack of organisation within the realms of the shoot, and sadly some faulty equipment this all quickly fell apart.
We decided to film at a location at RMIT that James had filmed at previously, we picked up all the gear and headed to our location. To fully investigate white balance and colour temperature we used the following gear:
- 2K Fresnel
- Sony XD Cam
- Bounce board and a black cutter
- Blue and orange gels
- Power kit
We set up our gear at the first location at RMIT and then the light didn’t turn on, which we assumed because of the location we were filming in was because there was no power (in hindsight this is ridiculously stupid and I can’t believe that the four of us just assumed this.) However, there were already a lot of difficulties with the location so we decided to find a new location. We couldn’t source anything at RMIT so we decided to film at my place out in Kew because it is a large open space, and there is enough power, room and light to achieve what we were looking to do. After getting an uber and carting all of this equipment out to my place, we set up the light and realised that it wasn’t the power at RMIT but the light was in fact broken. This was genuinely so defeating, it was such an effort to get everything from our first location to there, and on top of this it was the only time we found time to film together as a whole group before the presentation is due. It was extremely disheartening and frustrating but nonetheless a good learning curve for all of us – test the equipment.
All in all, despite this being genuinely one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had trying to film a project it has been a huge learning curve for me. I’ve learnt the importance of organisation, and having allocated roles for the group so that we all know what we’re doing on set. I’ve also learnt to test the gear, especially before we take it offsite to a location and inevitably have to loop back to the tech desk.
Here’s a link to our first investigative piece: Click here