Major Project: Re shoot day 1 / Issues with crewing

Re shoot day 1

Following off from the first feedback from Simon, It was now time for my first re shoot where I would capture the very important missing scenes such as Isaiah's death/reviving scene, the cutaways of the items both Lily and Isaiah holding fliers and art work. This required 2 locations, Rochester university and Maidstone Mote Park. It also required a minimum of 4 in a crew. Sound op, Camera, production assistant for clapper and director. 

Here is my risk assessment for the re shoot.




So, the first thing I would like to mention is that working in a class with lots of students who don't want to help out is a very infuriating thing. From since the very start of my production, no one wanted help me or crew up on my shoot even after countless Facebook posts. Since my shoot takes place in both London and Maidstone, I thought it would be a good idea to get some help from those who are already in the maidstone area. Travel cost would have been covered and food but no one seemed to want to help. even from the other year groups I couldn't afford to get a runner from sites like Mandy because most of them came from London and travel costs just wouldn't be worth it. Since my re shoot day fell on a tuesday which was the Studio production day for the second years, I was unable to use them. Thankfully, Gavin managed to get me in contact with Harvey Flux who was a first year. The shoot was taking place in around 3 days and he managed to agree to help me during the maidstone mote park shoot. 

examples of my informal attempts to gather a sound op/ extra help;

The Shoot

And during this reshoot, it's safe to say it went a lot smoother than my day one reshoot which occurred in the same location. This is because I learnt from some of my previous mistakes and managed to be a lot more efficient during the shoot day.

So, I arrived to rochester with the equipment on my own, due to Harvey not being available in the morning it meant that I had to be on sound for the pick up shots in Rochester University. This was quite bizarre because it was the first time I picked up the sound equipment in a very long time,I used the video below that really helped me stay on track with how to capture a good sound. 

So after refreshing my memory on the equipment, I set up the sound equipment waiting for the crew and Moses to arrive and once they arrive we made our way down to the art corridor. Although the rest of the day went smoothly getting these pick up shots became a big problem due to the time of day we were at the University. Luckily, lunch had just finished so everyone was going back to the classrooms. But due to the amount of people in the building still, we still had a lot of noise disturbances and a lot of teachers going through the corridors. This meant that getting simple shots took a very long time, almost an hour later than it should've been. Maybe I did not learn from my other shoot day but I should've left even more time to shoot because I still had disturbances, even during study week. I should have expected more disturbances during a school week. I think I under estimated how long it would take because in my head the shots were still really simple and I only needed a few shots. I was now running behind schedule and this meant that Harvey was now waiting for me for a little bit until I arrive to Maidstone.

During the shoot in Rochester, I realised I might have a slight bit of continuity issues due to my actor having a slightly different haircut than before. And I knew this would be something that would bug me in the edit because I was fully aware of it. but I was hoping that no one else would notice. This shows me how important it is to get all of your footage on the day that you shoot because you can't always guarantee the actors will look the exact same.  I know with bigger productions, actors sign detailed contracts that can sometime prohibit them from changing their appearance too much but since I am only a small production, I couldn't really do that. Luckily due to the controlled environment of the University, the lighting setup was still the same this meant that my visual would be a very close match till the day that I shot. However I need to understand that I will not always be this lucky in terms of lighting set ups, and this will still be a learning curve for me to make sure I get all the shots I need first time round so I'm not left with the risk of more continuity issues. 

Overall thought on the mini Rochester shoot:

I was happy that I was a little bit more efficient this time but also a little bit annoyed at the current continuity issues. Clearly my time management is still not the best as I really wanted to be on time for everything. 

Maidstone reshoot

So, my crew and actor made our way to Maidstone my park where we would now do the reshoot of Isaiah is single shots and seen. Upon arriving, I learnt from my mistake and headed straight to the correct location this saved quite a bit of time as well and. The team got ready really quickly.  Harvey did an amazing job on sound which was great! It was such a quiet day in the park, that I really realised I jeopardise myself by having the first shoot day on the weekend. There was no basically no one in the park and it was really quiet, it's just shame because there was barely any dialogue needed for any of the scenes shot this day so I learnt my lesson. Everything was going smoothly, almost too smoothly that we blasted through most of the scenes and had to wait a little bit for it to get darker to shoot Isaiah's death scene. I initially wanted it to be when the Sun goes down just before nighttime where everything is quite blue , But it was still so bright by the time we finish some of the shots that I had to make do with having it a bit more brighter than initially anticipated. 

I successfully completed All the missing shots that I needed. It was a great feeling, although I know that I need to work on some sound and maybe get some dubbing going on, at this moment in time I now had complete footage which made me really happy. Harvey did an amazing job on sound and he even managed to capture extra foley sounds which I was now able to use in the edit to enhance my sound design. He is a great asset to the team and I wish I actually had him throughout the whole project. 

Next steps 

The next part is to piece together as quickly as possible all the missing pieces to show to Simon next week. This will be my second viewing where he will now see a complete film.

I also need to reschedule a second today to fix some of the continuity errors that I have with mum . She kept saying Isaiah's name wrong and as I was also holding up the wrong picture (something I should've noticed on the shoot day).