Shooting Day 1

– Before shooting – Having the target to slow down the pace by filling more details in, we booked the studio for 6 hours.

I thought we have prepared better than the last time so I wasn’t worried at all, and I have never imagined this shooting day was full of episodes again, things didn’t seem to went correctly, everyone including the director had a blank face for during the shooting, no one seemed to know what are they doing now or what is the next thing to prepare. Jialu and I discussed on the way back home, we didn’t really get the reason why this shooting ended up in this way.

The first difficulties that appeared were time management once again, we all knew that this is a class exercise which means there is supposed to have episodes and challenges occur but we still really want everything to flow fluently, I don’t have mental health issue but I feel like I have OCD when I meet any timing issues, say if I have 2000 word essay due on Friday, I will start doing research and planning two weeks before the due date, I get frustrated easily when the time wasn’t going as I planned. Although I know things always go completely different to your expectation so I always comfort myself to not be frustrated by time management but I don’t think this is something bad at all, in our group we actually need someone there to push everyone gets going even the shot wasn’t satisfying enough. Within the given 6 hours of shooting time, we spend the first 4 hours just to build up the setting, we really did speed up a little for things we had that was the same as practical project #1 such as the black curtains we hang up.

Secondly, compared to our knowledge and experience on film lighting, the lighting set we had was massive, the huge set was used to create a perfect silhouette, since the silhouette look sharper with the lamp switch to flush, ‘From the first project shooting, we found the shoots are too dark, so we want once again, test shooting or test lighting set should be done before so we can get feedback and help from Robin. We want the silhouette to be nice and sharp, we cannot make the environment even darker because we also want some filled lights to lit the background, but we cannot adjust the ISO for sure because we don’t want too much noise so, moreover, we also cannot adjust the aperture anymore because what we had was the lens’ biggest aperture – 4.

Moreover, through this practical project, I think working with a film crew can really see people’s personality. Our director and cinematographer didn’t have the same vision on camera coverage, usually, is the director who gives direction to the whole team, the cinematographer will be assisting and providing suggestions for the director but Jialu’s personality is just not letting her speak what she wants, and I am not saying this is bad but as a direction we just need to have a sense of leadership to lead the whole team to run and work efficiently. While they are trying to persuade each other that their vision works better, everyone else like me was just sitting there and wait for the next direction, that was another time wasting because we didn’t communicate well before shooting.

 

 

Comparing today’s shooting with one of the class exercises a few weeks ago in building 13, I was the director of the scene which I gave directions for everyone else in the crew, a quick call back from now, my group actually did a good job which I didn’t realise until this group practical project. I am not comparing the two experiences because I am saying which crew is better, its because I was surprised how the last assignment has reminded me one of the class exercises. Everyone in that group knew their roles well and they completed their job nice and fast once I gave directions. For example, Quinlan in our group was the camera, I told him the colour on the looked a bit too orange, Quinlan has fixed this immediately.

Overall, after meeting with Robin we have also discussed on our group project, I think not having a first AD person is kind of the main reason which caused these episodes, the role of an assistant director on a film includes tracking daily progress against the filming production schedule, arranging logistics, preparing daily call sheets, checking cast and crew, and maintaining order on the set. When this role is missing in a film crew like us, we didn’t have any meetings beforehand, we only communicated through group chatting, no one was there to make sure everyone got the messages and have read all the messages. I understand at this point of a semester, everyone has so much to do at the time, but communication in between the crew is extremely important for any production team. A variety show, an advertising, a drama, a music video or even just a simple photography shootings, the crew need to hold up meetings with people they are collaborating with to make sure everyone in the crew knows what their job is and what to do during shooting.