Major Shoot
This blog is to some up how my major shoot went. First of all i couldn’t have asked more from my crew, they were excellent in helping me get everything i need. I also was pleased with the actors and overall things went well. Now there was many positive things that did come out of my shoot, but hear i will reflect on the negative as i feel it is from these things i will learn the most.
However there were certain days (or perhaps times) where i felt i had lost all my confidence and how the scenes were going to planned out. Which was surprising since i had spent time doing several drafts of the script, storyboards, shot list, shooting schedule and camera diagrams. All this preperation and i still felt underprepared, and i find it hard to understand why.
This was the second film i directed this year, and it featured, more much more conventional drama scenes then my minor, i.e. dialogue/conversation as opposed to just action. I was also working with more actors and a child actor, again something i had never done before. So the planning and schedule of the days had to be pretty precise and planned well to achieve everything. Except for a few technical problems and things taking a bit longer than expect, the longest we over ran on any day was about an hour, which was perhaps annoying considering it had been an early start, but i felt one extra hour was quite good, considering one day i aimed to shoot about 3 – 4 minutes of film.
Yet certain situations threw me off my concentration. For example: some of my extras were unable to turn up one day, or only for a limited amount of time, which meant i couldn’t use them as to how i planned. This meant using crew as stand ins, and for the extra that did turn up, shooting all their scenes before they had to leave. And whilst i had planned my best to as to how to film these shots, fully aware they were going to be filmed out of chronological order (its expected when making tv/film) it confused me much for so, and found when consulting my shot list, the virtually step by step guide i created was not sinking in. I became flustered, we were over running, the crew and actors including myself, were hungry, tired and cold, and i felt i had to sacrifice the last couple of shots in terms of quality, just to get them done. Personally i am not sure i am happy with a couple of those final shots, but they had to be done.
Furthermore, having a child actor on set was another challenge i had never faced. As soon as i yelled action, the child did exactly as i asked, but in between takes, they got easily distracted, and was another thing i had to control, and perhaps didn’t realise just how much extra hard work that would be. I have a niece and nephew, so i know exactly how children can be cheeky and how much they need to be entertained, but i guess i was just not prepared in this way, and at times found it hard to concentrate.
I can’t help but feel that even with all my planning, i may have done too much, which perhaps confused me more, than if i had done less. I’m not sure. At times i was sticking strictly to the shooting schedule, and at other times was forced to change it, because of various situations (i.e actor had to leave, weather, lighting). When i did change the shooting order, there was less structure to the shoot and that is perhaps when things started to go wrong, and left myself and others confused.
I felt like i needed just five – ten minutes to collect my ideas and just go over things in my head, but because it was a busy shoot, and overall from collecting my kit to returning it, i barely rested. There was so much to do, even after shooting, like making sure lunches, kit and props etc were prepared the next day. I know i did this with my major, but i realise, just how much hard work five consecutive days of shooting was. I felt i was knackered before the shoot from various work, so maybe this was another reason i was failed at being a good director at times, because i hadn’t rested enough. I hadn’t relaxed and then gone over my shooting schedule, instead, i was straight into it.
I wouldn’t say this was down to bad pre-production, i had been planning for at least two months solidly, amongst other projects. But its the little things that you perhaps didn’t realise you have to do, such as getting extra batteries, getting the food, picking up keys etc, that take up time, which didn’t enable me to relax properly before the shoot. This and my confidence being slightly knocked beforehand with the results of my minor. Not a a bad mark at all, but some of the comments mentioned, were things i had not picked up on, which made me question my directing ability. Some of my focus on the later days was watching Mike Leigh films to get ideas of how natural the characters acted together. i also wanted to experiment with certain shots, and test out a few ideas, but again perhaps i left this too close to the shooting dates. Maybe i shouldn’t had done this, and used this opportunity to relax and not overwork myself. Overall i think i perhaps tried to do too much on this project.
I’m not sure, but i feel that these things collectively made my shoot a lot more stressful that how i would have liked it to be. And i do believe this may effect the overall film. I am constantly questioning how this film will be received, and i just wish that my shoot had gone better. I was picking a difficult issue to portray in a drama, so maybe i was out of my depth. All i know is that i have learnt probably far more from this film than the other majors i have worked on, in terms of how to improve and things to look out for in the future. A big learning curve!
