Coverack
My roles for this film were DoP on the production and Camera-op on set.
During pre-production Suz was meant to be DoP for the film, unfortunately she couldn’t make it to coverack for the week on set which wouldn’t help her with that role so it was passed on to me. This was another level of work for me but I found it exciting to start to work alongside Grace again as we worked together on her last group project in the same roles and worked very well together. My first job was to sit down with grace and get across what I was she wanted the film to look and feel like, I always like to have a feel of the film before planning out shots so it makes the process more fluid on and off set. Grace had already made a shot list as to what she wanted for Suz to see previous to passing the role over so I had a look through them to get a better understanding of what she wanted.
Unfortunately due to the location being such a distance away we didn’t do a recce of it with the full crew as the logistics with timing wouldn’t have been realistic, so myself, Grace, Emily and Ryan decided to take a trip to coverack and have a look around the area. This was a vital thing to do with my job role as it made it easier to visualise certain shots and also make new ideas for camera movements and lighting.
My choice of camera equipment and formats to shoot in had to be ran past Grace first as I needed to make sure she had an understating of what was going to be used on set and what limitations we had and didn’t have. I chose to use the Canon C200 as I was familiar the the camera and I felt the colours the sensor gave would have fitted the location and story well as it gives off very soon blues and greens. The main discussion was to use 4K or 1080p, there were pros and con of both mainly storage and editing problems but in the end I decided we needed to use 4K to make sure we could get the clearest footage indoors in low light and also more room to grade to how Grace wanted it to look. This did mean the edit had to be done on a Mac Pro as the files were large and hard to run and render in editing softwares but we luckily had one in uni that could be used for exactly that.
On set I had a few vital roles and lots of work to do in different departments, to start with when we got to the hostel I made sure I had a kit list of everything we had on the first day and also could a safe stable place for everything to be for the week. I then built the camera on the first night and tested all the features to make sure they were all working the the first scene the following morning to prevent any delays on set. I was working alongside Brandon Dole who was the sound op for the week and he had never worked with the cine camera to run sound into so this was new for both of us. I also then had some time to show my camera assistant Lewis how to correctly hold and pack the lens box and tripod etc so that when we were on set and I needed a lens we wouldn’t waste time or even risk breaking any of the equipment.
My other role on set was as DIT, this meant after every shoot/end of each day I would make sure we had at leat 2 back ups of all the footage on mine and Graces hard drive just in case anything was to go wrong with the footage, due to us using 4K the files were very large and we took over 120gb of footage a day which took a long time to transfer to both drives each night. I would also make sure they were in day and time order so when it came to the edit a few weeks later it would be easier to find and work with etc. I would the wipe all the cards and make sure all the batteries for the camera were fully charged for the following day.
The problem we had at this time of year was that the uni had only 1 battery for the camera and in normal conditions it would last about and hour and a half on and off shooting but we had temperatures averaging around 1-2 degrees and the battery was not lasting as long as we hoped, this didn’t cause us much of a problem as we did shoot a lot of the scenes indoors where I would wire the camera to the mains as the battery was charging for later shoots. It did mean when we were shooting I had to be careful leaving the camera on and also reviewing the footage. Storage did become a problem at times as 4K gives you 56mins on and 64gb card and that can be run through very easily during the takes of one scene, this meant I had to make sure we got consistent good shots and unfortunately had to delete a few shots that we deemed useless, it just put more pressure on the whole shoot at times.
My roles for this film were DoP on the production and Camera-op on set.
During pre-production Suz was meant to be DoP for the film, unfortunately she couldn’t make it to coverack for the week on set which wouldn’t help her with that role so it was passed on to me. This was another level of work for me but I found it exciting to start to work alongside Grace again as we worked together on her last group project in the same roles and worked very well together. My first job was to sit down with grace and get across what I was she wanted the film to look and feel like, I always like to have a feel of the film before planning out shots so it makes the process more fluid on and off set. Grace had already made a shot list as to what she wanted for Suz to see previous to passing the role over so I had a look through them to get a better understanding of what she wanted.
Unfortunately due to the location being such a distance away we didn’t do a recce of it with the full crew as the logistics with timing wouldn’t have been realistic, so myself, Grace, Emily and Ryan decided to take a trip to coverack and have a look around the area. This was a vital thing to do with my job role as it made it easier to visualise certain shots and also make new ideas for camera movements and lighting.
My choice of camera equipment and formats to shoot in had to be ran past Grace first as I needed to make sure she had an understating of what was going to be used on set and what limitations we had and didn’t have. I chose to use the Canon C200 as I was familiar the the camera and I felt the colours the sensor gave would have fitted the location and story well as it gives off very soon blues and greens. The main discussion was to use 4K or 1080p, there were pros and con of both mainly storage and editing problems but in the end I decided we needed to use 4K to make sure we could get the clearest footage indoors in low light and also more room to grade to how Grace wanted it to look. This did mean the edit had to be done on a Mac Pro as the files were large and hard to run and render in editing softwares but we luckily had one in uni that could be used for exactly that.
On set I had a few vital roles and lots of work to do in different departments, to start with when we got to the hostel I made sure I had a kit list of everything we had on the first day and also could a safe stable place for everything to be for the week. I then built the camera on the first night and tested all the features to make sure they were all working the the first scene the following morning to prevent any delays on set. I was working alongside Brandon Dole who was the sound op for the week and he had never worked with the cine camera to run sound into so this was new for both of us. I also then had some time to show my camera assistant Lewis how to correctly hold and pack the lens box and tripod etc so that when we were on set and I needed a lens we wouldn’t waste time or even risk breaking any of the equipment.
My other role on set was as DIT, this meant after every shoot/end of each day I would make sure we had at leat 2 back ups of all the footage on mine and Graces hard drive just in case anything was to go wrong with the footage, due to us using 4K the files were very large and we took over 120gb of footage a day which took a long time to transfer to both drives each night. I would also make sure they were in day and time order so when it came to the edit a few weeks later it would be easier to find and work with etc. I would the wipe all the cards and make sure all the batteries for the camera were fully charged for the following day.
The problem we had at this time of year was that the uni had only 1 battery for the camera and in normal conditions it would last about and hour and a half on and off shooting but we had temperatures averaging around 1-2 degrees and the battery was not lasting as long as we hoped, this didn’t cause us much of a problem as we did shoot a lot of the scenes indoors where I would wire the camera to the mains as the battery was charging for later shoots. It did mean when we were shooting I had to be careful leaving the camera on and also reviewing the footage. Storage did become a problem at times as 4K gives you 56mins on and 64gb card and that can be run through very easily during the takes of one scene, this meant I had to make sure we got consistent good shots and unfortunately had to delete a few shots that we deemed useless, it just put more pressure on the whole shoot at times.