Today was the second and final shoot day for our two VT's. This was an interview with an Etsy (Online clothes shop) seller. The premise of the interview/tutorial is to have the seller talk about herself for a little and then show how she makes an item for her store.
We met Conor at the studios and we then headed to the contributor's house. We arrived promptly at 10am and got to setting up the equipment. Sadly the director George Wing could not make the shoot but he prepared a comprehensive list of shots and ideas. He sent us a video he would like us to take inspiration from. We had a look the night prior and agreed we could follow this well in the interview.
In the last photoshoot VT, I did not get as much time on the camera as I would have liked so I made sure that today I did everything possible to do with the cameras.
We had a two camera setup. One was mainly getting a wide shot which we left to keep rolling or Alex Hargood or George would occasionally change its position. As we did have two cameras we needed to make sure that where getting the same pictures (colours, skin tones etc) so we spent a little time making sure they looked the same so that in the edit Alex would have to spend less time messing around with colour correcting.
My camera was the main camera for getting the cutaway shots as they are very important for this shoot to get great stuff that will be needed to keep the energy up in the edit.
The interviewee was really great for this shoot, she was charismatic and relatable meaning I think the viewers will make an instant connection with her. the will also realise what she does for her child really amazing. (She makes these online clothes to pay for speech therapy for her son who has learning difficulties)
The interview segment ran smoothly with Conor asking the questions, Alex.H on sound and George.N on the camera. I managed to get good shots that we can cutaway from, including extreme close-ups and shots of her hands moving etc. These are all shots Alex.H can edit in when she is talking to make it feel as much like a professional interview as possible. George Wing mentioned the previous day that we need to get as many cutaways as possible, I made sure we did this today!
The interview was pretty simple, however, the DIY making a shirt was a harder ordeal to film. We still stuck with the same premise of one camera getting a wide that was monitored by George.N and Alex.H. I was getting the main cutaway shots. For the making of the shirt, this would include the needle, the sewing machine moving, close-ups of the shirt and so on. I just wanted to make sure Alex had every opportunity possible in the edit.
It has certainly been something that I learned in my previous couple of units, getting loads of coverage is never a bad thing. It may take slightly longer to edit with the abundance of clips, but I think the huge choice of clips will mean the edit looks really nice!
We did slightly crab the camera from left to right to enable that we got the "cleanest" shot of whatever we were trying to focus on. I made sure to take a little control of what I wanted to shoot and bring up my idea of what I wanted to do. As George the director could not make it today, Alex and I took control of the on-site directing as we needed to make sure that the footage we got was of good standard and stuff we can be proud of.
Even though the making of the shirt was no the quickest process, I made sure to be attentive at all times, thinking of possible new shots that I had not covered before. Doing this enabled me to get shots I may have not got if I just stood there from behind the camera waiting for someone else to suggest something. Examples of these are close-ups of the interviewee when she is making the clothes as well as shots like her hands moving and placing parts of the shirt down. If needed I did ask the interviewee to do something again to make sure I got the shot I wanted. A shot that took a lot of time to get was her pinning the shirt together. This was because I would frame something up and then she would move her hands slightly meaning my framing was bad! However, I learned from it and eventually got some really nice takes of this and I hope they make it into the edit!
Throughout the day we made sure we got every angle, wide, medium, close-ups and that means when Alex comes to edit he will have a lot of choice in what to use. I think today was a big success because even without a director we managed to film some really nice shots and ones that right away we knew would work incredibly well in the edit.
One thing George wanted but we could not do as the interviewee did not want to film was a shot from outside her house, introducing the segment. Alex.H said we could use some footage from one of his previous units to fill this gap. Overall, it was a great day, we acted and recorded professionally and I think we achived some very high quality shots that will look really nice when it is edited all together! We worked really well as a team once again and I am now excited to focus soley on the studio camera operations for this unit!
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