Production

Preparation

(Week 9)

The day of the shoot was somewhat a triumph and a disaster all rolled into one. The morning went smoothly and myself, my team and crew that came along to help out, set up the set and dressed it with the decorative items we had brought in. I assigned everyone roles for the day ahead and we began to set up the cameras, lights and mics. The contributors arrived at 10am and I gave them a rundown of how the day would proceed. We ran mic checks on all the contributors and then began blocking and running through the script. We had everything set in place and I was really happy with how everything was looking and felt the script flowed smoothly and efficiently. By that time, it was 11am and we had to clear the studio for a guest speaker coming in to talk to a class. I was annoyed by this as I felt we had just gotten into the swing of things and was agitated that we had to wait three hours until we could begin filming. I knew this was a drawback before filming however I didn’t realise how much valuable time we would be losing. When we arrived back to the studio at 2pm to film, I was confident it was going to go well since we were well set up beforehand. I briefed the crew and contributors again and headed up to the gallery to begin filming. 

Production

This is where disaster struck. The mics that were working perfectly before the break decided to work against us and time was ticking. The whole afternoon we were back and forth with the sound trying our very best to solve the issue. Some recordings would be really clear, and others would be muffled, echo throughout or cut out completely. At this point I was frustrated as everything I had planned out so meticulously in my head to make sure the day would be as efficient as possible, all came crashing down around me. To add to this, on the day I did feel that our DOP Bobby, didn’t make much contribution to the filming of the show at all. His shots that he was suggesting were extremely basic and when I asked him to do a shot the framing would be off, it wouldn’t be what I had asked of him and he began to become quite passive aggressive over the intercom. This I didn’t appreciate whatsoever as I thought he would’ve pulled his weight to help myself and Kara and work as a team effectively. Regardless, I ignored it and pushed on as I had other things to be more concerned about. In the end I sought help from my lecturer in order to get a technician to help fix the sound for us as it was a clear problem with the mics. By this point, it was 4:00pm we had just 30 minutes to practically film the entire show. I was getting panicked as I didn’t think we would be able to accomplish it. Luckily, the technician allowed us to stay until it was complete. I was so relieved. We wrapped at 5:30pm, with a sigh of relief.

Evaluation

Looking back now, I would’ve made the conscious effort to fight for more filming time as a few hours was definitely not enough and in hindsight was nowhere near enough time to film a studio production. However, I am extremely proud of what we achieved considering the circumstances and I learned that I am able to work under extreme pressure and to tight time restraints.