H.P - Reflection on Shoot

Time & Location

• We completed our shoot between 10:00 and 16:00 on 10th January 2015 at the St Thomas a Becket Church in Capel, near Tonbridge.

My Focus

• My role in the shoot was of the director, meaning that I took a leading role in the direction of our actor and in the setting up of shots.
• Due to this I was focusing on the majority of shots in the shoot, including the steadicam shots, shots of technical difficulty (e.g. hair raising, candle fall, shots with smoke) and the dragging sequence.

My Contribution

• My individual contribution to the shoot was of a director/producer role.
• This means that I was responsible for the management of most elements of the shoot, including equipment, setting up most shots and directing our actor.
• I was also responsible for the management of people and resources, in the case of our shoot meaning that I organised the location and timings of the shoot and ensured that all the required elements were provided.
• I also owned the majority of the equipment used on the shoot, so I was responsible for managing these and in some cases helping the others in the group to get to grips with them.
  
  
  

Storyboard

• We stuck rigidly to the storyboard, only straying from it twice for two different reasons.
• The first was to include a shot that would better show our actor kneeling before she sits on the pew, as was suggested by our actor who said it was a custom.
• The second was when we began to run out of time, we decided that some of the shots in the dragging sequence were not essential and could be removed without harming the sequence.
• Otherwise we attempted to follow the use of camera and framing exactly as our storyboard showed.

What Went Well

•  The shots that stood out to us the most as visually impressive were the graveyard shots with the smoke, one of the side shots as our actor reads the note in the church and the hair raise shot.
• These worked well because we took into consideration the range of equipment and visual features available to us on location when storyboarding, allowing us to plan these shots in advance and capture them quickly and effectively.
• We were also very pleased with the outcome of all our practical effect shots, which included the dragging sequence, hair raise and candle fall.

 Challenges

• The most challenging part of our shoot was time management. We knew from the planning stages that the timings were going to be tight as we only had a maximum of 6 hours at the location, including set-up time and returning the church to its original state after use.
• We encountered an issue at one point where the key holders for the church turned up to lock it at around 3:40pm, with us still needing to capture another page and a half of storyboard frames, including the very technical dragging shots. We made the decision to cut certain shots from the film that were not required and managed to complete the final shots and get our stuff out of the building by 4:00pm.
• This situation went much better than it could have, with our quick re-evaluation of essential shots saving us from missing out key shots that would have required us to go through the booking process for the church again, which would have resulted in us having to return the location 3 weeks later at the earliest.
• Another challenge of the shoot were the practical effects, which required time and patience to set up and film. 
• The most time consuming shot was the hair raising shot, which required us to construct the string and tape set up with our actor's hair on location. To maximise the effectiveness of our time management, I undertook this task with help from our actor while Kurtis and Mia captured establishing shots with the track outside the church.

How Will This Inform Our Next Shoot 

• Next time we shoot we will be more careful to manage our time and will book any locations for a number of days, not just one to ensure we have plenty of contingency time.
• We will also ask the help of more people so that we have enough hands to manage all our equipment and film while simultaneously setting up and preparing for more difficult and technical shots to reduce our time wasted.
• One of the positive points I will take from this shoot and attempt to use next time is the importance of near excessive planning, going into detail about every aspect of the shoot so that there are no nasty surprises on location such as an effect not working or running out of light.