This week’s 3 hour class was devoted to repeating an exercise that was previously carried out in small groups of 3-4. This time however, we worked on it as a whole class. With Robin as our director, we were all appointed our roles; in particular ones that we had perhaps shied away from in the past or were not very familiar with. Therefore my role and another student’s, was sound. Whilst we could figure out and vaguely remember where most of the cords went, there were a few that stumped us and Robin was called in to help. Once we had our equipment ready to go, we had to figure out where to position ourselves in relation to the camera. Initially we had problems with the boom casting a shadow over the actors, however this was remedied by holding the boom significantly above the actors. As this was not ideal in terms of sound quality, we were told we would need to get wild lines. Although as per usual in the media industry, this was not possible due to time constraints. Additionally, in future we would have to record a minute of the room’s ambient sounds.

I found this exercise incredible helpful as I’m now confident in sound recording. Despite Robin’s explanation that the crew wasn’t usually privy to the shotlist, shooting order, story board and camera set-up, it was incredibly refreshing to know there was a plan in place that was going to be executed. For weeks it has given me mild anxiety as we have all improvised scene set ups with blurred roles and constant (usually unwanted) suggestions from other students. To further quell my anxiety, we were also given time during this class to plan out a scene we would be shooting the next day. A small shot-list was prepared and I was appointed camera operator.We conducted various run throughs with our volunteer actors and I was roughly shown where I would be shooting from.

At the end of class Robin relayed to us his experience of watching an efficient fire crew working together to put out an apartment building fire. He told us how he was completely amazed at their effort and that together, they looked like a well oiled machine. He then posed the rather fair question “why the bloody hell can’t film crews do that?” A few students had suggestions as to why film crews were so dysfunctional- everyone has creative ideas they’d like to share and there are constant technology problems etc. However, these excuses to me are not entirely legitimate. If everyone is able to focus on their own job and knows their craft well, film crews should be able to work in harmony together… in theory or an ideal world.