This past Saturday I helped Mimo out with one of her shoots along with Kiralee and Sam. This was my first time working as a semi professional (?) crew/collaborative effort outside of class in Film 3, and I found the experience to be really rewarding. Here are my main takeaways from the day:
1) Being apart of a crew
The idea of being a proper ‘crew’ with designated jobs. Having seen it played out in multiple behind the scenes features of TV and film productions but never organised enough to implement it in my own shoots, it was weirdly satisfying to actually go through the typical motions of a film set. I found that having the routine of rolling/slate in/slate out/action/cut kept the shoot organised and much smoother. Now that I know the need for this I’ll try to use it in my next shoot.
It was also good to have a specific role I was in charge of and collaborate with Mimo as the director, Kiralee as the camera op and Sam as the First AD.
2) Being a good director
Even though I’ve decided not to use actors for my own project, it was really useful to see the way Mimo communicated with them. I’m not naturally great at wanting to tell people exactly what to do, and I really liked the way Mimo was able to clearly communicate her vision in an effective way. She had specific directions and explained what she wanted which was really helpful for everyone and ensured there was no confusion, but also didn’t seem too pushy or too particular, letting all of us as well as the actors pitch in to get the best shot. The way she described her vision for each shot was really easy to understand, and helped the rest of the crew collaborate effectively according to her directions. Also, in particular, it was good to observe Mimo communicating with the actors, something that will be helpful and relevant for me in the future.
3) The unpredictability of shoots
No single film shoot ever goes completely smoothly and it’s essential to be open minded, flexible and learn to troubleshoot as best as you can given the circumstances that you can’t change. For us, the lighting and sound turned out to be a major issue as the shoot day turned out to be 30 degrees, sunny and really windy. We had some trouble with the exposure, as the actress was wearing a white tshirt which was way overexposed when her face was at the right exposure. For lighting we had a lite panel and reflectors, but found that on such a sunny day neither made much of a difference even after trying several angles. As for sound, the wind made it difficult to capture the sound effects we intended to get without the strong muffling in the background. We did solve this by recording a bit of foley in an alleyway that was shielded from the wind, which sounded much better through the headphones, but I’m not sure how it will be when put into Premiere. In these cases where problems are unavoidable, I think it’s important to plan accordingly and think about reshoots etc. if the first try doesn’t work.
We also ended up ahead of schedule, ending up with about 40 minutes to spare before the next actress was set to arrive. I think we used this time effectively by recording extra sound effects and planning ahead the order of shots for the next segment, which helped the shoot go smoothly and finish faster than planned.
Throughout this semester in Film 3, I have enjoyed participating in collaborative exercises as a class, for example the lighting exercises, and the introduction into working as a part of a crew. Observations I have made through the exercises will be very helpful to implement into future works.
