Thursday 30 November 2017

Watford Ladies Commission: Shoot Day 1

Day 1 of filming for this commission was originally going to take place on Tuesday, however, due to some commitments of the general manager Ed, it had to be moved back to Wednesday.

This did mean I would have to film more footage on my final two days at the training session. Alex Hargood helped me with filming today and would be the main camera operator as I would be presenting the piece. I knew Alex would be great with the camera from the previous projects he has worked on. "Choosing the right cast and crew for your upcoming video production may not seem like a science, but there are key elements to keep in mind so the end product is successful. " (ambientskies,2016) 

We arrived around two hours early and did a quick recce of the location as we could not access the training pitch before the team arrived. "Before you can start filming, it is not uncommon to visit the location to make sure it meets your production requirements from both a creative and practical point of view" (elementtwentysix, 2017) It was a very open area with no obvious trip hazard as well as being a very flat ground so everything looked very safe before we started filming. It was important to do this because I had not had the opportunity to recce before the day of shooting as the location is very far from my house.

Around 30 minutes before the team was scheduled to arrive we set up the cameras, setting white balance and ISO etc "Many photographers have been disappointed at the end of a shoot to find that they’d forgotten to check what ISO setting they’d left their camera on in their last shoot." (Digital Photography School, 2014) Alex suggested that we make the cameras look as similar as possible before shooting so that there would be less need for color correction when it comes to editing. We set up outside adjusting the cameras outside as we thought this would be where they would be used (this would not be the case) and we managed to nearly exactly match the colors, light etc on both cameras for outside conditions.

We expected to interview a few players so we would have a side view on a tripod and Alex would be filming an over the shoulder shot looking at the player, we discussed how it would be filmed and handheld seemed to make the most sense when filming an over the shoulder shot.

However nearly all of our plans where throw out the window once we met with Ed. Unfortunately, the club is going through a tough time and only a few players turned up for training. We also did not get told that today would not be an outside training session it would be more of training strength and conditioning. After we got the news we had to think on our feet to get something filmed today.

Ed suggested we talk to one of the injured players who had just got surgery, this was actually a great idea because it shows something different to what a lot of people think about when they think about football. " Sometimes the most interesting stories are hidden in the margins of other ones" (Film AV Club, 2014) This was obviously a change of plan but we did a great job of getting something filmed in a very tough situation. It actually was interesting to get to understand more about a subject that I had not planned for. In a way, this probably was actually more interesting than what I had planned. Alex and I both set up a tripod, Alex got the close up while I got the wide angle. It was a very tight area and we also had an additional 6 people in the room who were not being interviewed so it was a tough place to film.

Below are screenshots of the angles we got. We interviewed three players as well as the physiotherapist who gave us some great behind the scenes information about injuries that the general viewer would probably not know about. I think we did a very good job to adapt to the circumstances, we also acted very professional and filmed some really nice shots which will look good in the final piece. We also got some cutaway shots that will be used for then they are talking about injuries as it will make the interview more interesting.




I think we did the best job we could possibly do in this scenario. It was not planned in my original script which is most likely going to have to completely re-written due to circumstances out of my control, but I think in a way it may have made the documentary more interesting as it shows something that a lot of people do not think about. "Planning goes a long way in preparation, but, documentaries are notoriously slippery to wrangle into a schedule, since a new inspiration can lead the documentary into a direction never imagined." (ScriptMag, 2014) At first, I was worried this may hurt the documentary. But it worked out well and after the initial worry, I realised it would work.

I would obviously have loved to have stayed to my script because it would make it easier to edit, however with what is happening with the club recently it means it would be hard to have filmed everything I wanted. If I were to do this again I would probably have asked Ed exactly what was going on on each day's training so I could have planned my script and shooting schedule a little better, but that is a learning experience that I have taken already from this project. However, we must still admit with many of the players not attending training it would have been tough to plan anything for today's shoot.



We also filmed some shots of one of the players in the gym. She was one of only a couple of first teams players in today meaning it would be good to get shots of what she was doing in the gym and most likely I will overlay some voiceover. I liked that we went to the effort to get every shot possible. It was more or less 90 minutes of non-stop filming. We ran into difficulties with camera batteries though, with the "main" camera running very low on battery with a worry that it was going to run out. "If you’re shooting in the outdoors, you’d better have a least one extra battery for every camera that you own. Especially if you do any cold weather photography" (danbaileyphoto, 2014) This was important to know because it means I will most likely buy another battery to make sure we don't run into such battery related worries in the future. It seems silly but you never think it will be an issue until it actually happens. This has made me more aware that a second battery would always be handy.

Once we filmed everything we could do inside we wanted to film some of the pieces to camera. With a big script re-write ahead of me, I did have to think on my feet slightly about what. I looked at the script and talked to Alex about what he thought may be best, we decided to shoot all the possible PTC so that if I need them in the edit, I have them. We set up in three locations to make sure that it was not filmed in all the same place, this is because as we missed yesterday we had to still pretend we were there. This meant filming some parts as if they where the day before, which we hope people will not recognize. I researched into what conventions I should follow. I found this useful video which showed me a lot about being a presenter.



This is something ideally we would have not done but because of the unavailability of some of the club members, we could not attend. I was ready to record on Tuesday, but when the news came through on the Monday that we would not be filming I still wanted to make sure we got that footage as if it was Tuesday today.

We did struggle with lighting in this part of the shoot, it was pitch black anyway, but there were big lights lighting up the training pitch but they did not help us that much without the shoot. I did have a LED light on top of the camera which did help and made sure that my face did have some light on it, but we had to make sure we did not have the light on too high because then it looked unrealistic and pretty bad.  We did have the training pitch as a backdrop in all three of the pieces to camera which was very good and on the theme, even though on Wednesday at least we did not actually have any outside training.

We got some last cutaway shots of me walking into the building which can be used to transition between scenes. Overall I think today we did a great job at working with what we got. We could not control the circumstances at the club meaning filming was very tough but we filmed enough to make it work in the project even though it does mean a big script re-write.

Alex was fantastic today, helping me film and also letting me know his thoughts on how certain shots should be done and we always found a shot that worked. Having two cameras helped get extra angles which will be a massive help in editing but we did have the issues with one camera om the last legs of its battery. The Tascam recorded some great audio and it was important that we used it as there was some wind and that would have been picked up if we had used the normal shotgun mic. Luckily I had done a lot of planning before shooting meaning even when a scenario like today happened, I had a lot of backup ideas and different ways of telling the story. It will be frustrating to re-do the script but it will be worth it.

Bibliography:

ambientskies, 2016
http://blog.ambientskies.com/how-to-choose-the-right-cast-crew-for-your-next-video-production
Accessed on 30th November 2017

elementtwentysix, 2017
https://elementtwentysix.com/6-things-look-location-recce/
Accessed on 30th November 2017

Digital photography school, 2014


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