Shooting Week

Monday 2nd December, 2019

LEAH

Today was a day that we allocated to shooting all parts involving Leah at our student house- start somewhere we are familiar with to get comfortable with filming and setting up. We wanted to take every opportunity possible to set up faster so that we'd be prepared for when we actually came to filming Poppy, Fi and Josh. We wanted to be professional around them and the only way to do that was to navigate well together as a team and communicate. We did have a bit of trouble communicating when putting the production pack together hence why we were only able to take out equipment on the Monday. This did put us behind other groups at the beginning but we didn't let that phase us and instead knew that we all had to pull our weight and put all differences aside.

As we wanted the footage to come across as personal to Leah, we set up the camera in her bedroom- a place of comfort. However, we found setting up the tripod and camera in her room to be rather difficult and frustrating as it was such a small area. Once the camera was set up in one place it was rather hard to manoeuvre it to another which again was frustrating as we wanted to cover different angles. We were also running out of daylight as you can probably see from the photo above. This is because we had a morning of rushing to finish our production pack at Uni and then rushing back home with all the equipment to film. We didn't let this stop us however, and carried on. 

Leah went onto lay out all her work on the floor so we could spread it and see as much as possible. We thought the floor would be the best place for her to sit and show us her work and she said she felt more comfortable doing it that way. We really liked how it looked although the lighting was not favourable.

The lighting was too warm and wasn't going to fit with the white balance of the rest of the film.

We set up the boom and filmed both for visuals and audio that we could cut away and use for voice-overs if needed. Leah would occasionally flick through her work so we could see a variation of pieces that she's done. We kept the camera rolling for quite long periods of time and made use of the zoom so again we could cut at parts we needed to, to made editing easier. When we had enough footage we downloaded all the rushes and Claudia went through making transcripts of the important parts that we shot today. By this time it was dark outside so we knew that we had taken way longer to set up and get all of this shot than it should've done. We booked out Ro5a tomorrow for the sole purpose to practise setting up and preparing for a shoot as a group. I think this will really benefit us and we have the whole day to try different, exciting things out in the studio.

Tuesday 3rd December, 2019

PRACTISE DAY

Today we got into the studio for about 9:30 and began to practise how quickly we could set up the camera, tripod and boom as we'd slacked yesterday. We did this a few times until each one of us felt comfortable setting up different parts. 

We also had Miso bring in his DSLR that we could use as a second camera to get close-ups. As Poppy had arranged to shoot with us from 9:30 until 11:30, we knew that we had to be able to set up as fast as we could to enable for as much shooting time as possible.

We then went onto thinking about how we were going to interview Josh, the animator. We never learnt his surname as he preferred to go by his stage name 'Diggery'. As it was such a large space we set up the camera in front of the bricked wall in Ro5a in order to add a bit more life and texture to the otherwise bland shot. We then put the cameras into position. We left the Canon XF305 stationary in front of our subject and then used the DSLR for profile shots and close-ups.

We then moved onto the projector and got up some liquid light shows to see what sort of effect that would create.

We weren't satisfied with the intensity of the projection onto the subject as the room was too bright. Because there was no way to block out the sunlight and we didn't want to have to shoot Josh and Fi in the evening, we had to think of a plan B. We started looking at booking out R19 instead of using this space for the projections as it's a smaller room that can easily be blacked out. We booked it and then carried on to utilise Ro5a the best we could for the rest of the practise day. We didn't want to have to say goodbye to the idea of projections as we felt like it encompassed what it was like to be a Synaesthetic. It was all to do with the sensations of colours so we wanted to do everything to keep it in and make it look as good as we could.

Wednesday 4th December, 2019

ANIMATIONS

I was unfortunately working this day but Miso, Kaitlan and Claudia went into Uni and Practised with animations as we hadn't allocated this day to shooting. They came out with some beautiful ideas and their own interpretations of liquid light shows. We could definitely use these as transitions for our film. 

The evening of the 4th however, once i returned from work, i borrowed a house mates camera and decided to try and come up with some visuals myself. I used our bathroom sink and filled it with water. I put on some music and dropped little droplets of blue ink into the water to see what effect that would create. It was really beautiful to see the way the ink expanded and moved so delicately in the water. I managed to get some really beautiful close-ups of the ink travelling through the water. However, to get good close-ups, i was kneeling on our toilet seat which eventually decided to give way under my knees. I did break the toilet seat but all i can say is that it was worth it and i will buy a new one :)

Thursday 5th December, 2019

POPPY and FI

We woke up bright and early, packed all the equipment into Leah's car and set off for Godalming at 8 in the morning. Miso, unfortunately, was unable to make this shoot due to travel restrictions. Leah's car could only fit four of us in and we thought it would be easier if the Leah, Kaitlan, Claudia and I went as we were going from the same place. Miso was allocated the editing for this however. 

We were really excited about today as it was our teams first actual outing on location. We felt prepared but were still a little nervous as we didn't know how the day would go.

We arrived a little early as Poppy had some things to do before shooting so she pushed back the time. We luckily found the loveliest country shop about five minutes drive away so we stopped there for a coffee and some breakfast. 

As soon as we reached the Studio and met Poppy you could tell we were all filled with relief. She was so lovely and so welcoming. Claudia and Leah began to talk with her while Kaitlan and I started getting equipment out of the car. Her studio was beautiful and quirky but very small so we had to be careful when setting up. We started with the long sit down interview so we could get that out of the way. We would ask Poppy one question and she's just continue to talk and answer others as she went so it was wonderful and easy and just genuinely interesting.

We made sure to set the white balance on both cameras. The one above was the DSLR which Kaitlan handled on today's shoot to get close-ups.

Poppy's sketches compared to her jewellery

After the interview we wanted to get practical and really see the inner workings of Poppy's craft. We asked her if she would take us through the process of making her jewellery. It was mesmerising to watch. She began by melting some recycled silver that she would then press and roll through a mould. She had to do this several times as there was an inconvenient nib on the silver. This was good for us however as we could catch all the weird and wonderful sounds on the audio.

There was a lot of loud hammering, sizzling, burning and clanging. 

All in all the shoot day was a wild success. We all worked well together even though we were in such a small area, we communicated with Poppy wonderfully and most importantly she had a good time and felt perfectly comfortable. As did we. We left her studio feeling very positive and eager to set up and film with Fi. I think a lot of this was down to the practise we had done on Tuesday.

AFTERNOON WITH FI

Setting up for Fi was a little more complicated as we wanted to have her painting while listening to music however, we had nothing for her to paint onto or with. This resulted in Claudia and I running around the campus trying to scavenge for anything we could find. We eventually found Paul Vivian who directed us to a room filled with huge sheets of rolled paper. We pinned that to a wall in Ro5a. Miso and Claudia then found paints and brushes to go with that. After everything was successfully set up, I left Claudia, Miso and Leah to the shoot (as Miso had not been able to join us for Poppy) and went to help Kaitlan edit in the library.

The shoot didn't last too long and everyone said it went really well which was amazing. Overall it had been a really positive day!

They got her set up and ready to paint to music, something that she hadn't really done much of before as she only realised she had synaesthesia last summer.

This was the final product of her painting to music. The music she listened to was a piece of royalty free music Leah had found to avoid copyrighting issues. Leah told us how it was really interesting to see Fi's Synaestheisa play out on the paper, especially as Leah has Synaesthesia herself. 

Friday 6th December, 2019

JOSH 

FINAL SHOOTING DAY

We had planned to meet Josh at 10 but changed that time to 11 as there had been a cross over with the rooms. He was very understanding and almost preferred the later time.

As we now also had a bit of time to spare, Leah had brought in her art work so we could re-shoot anything if we had time. We had time, so we lay all her pieces out and began filming them again because the lighting in Ro5a was superior to that of her room.

We wanted to try and be clever and get a pan of everything however, as much as we tried, it didn't come out very well.

Josh joined us half way through this adn we greeted him warmly. Again it was such a comfortable and calm encounter and he was amazed to see all of Leah's work layed out in front of him. Unexpectedly, Leah and Josh began talking about their Synaesthesia and Leah was talking him through his work. Miso, Claudia, Kaitlan and I all saw this as a perfect opportunity to begin filming. We told them that we thought what they were talking about was really interesting and we were going to film it- they were more than happy to continue.

It was really lovely to see them both so engaged with each other's work as this enthusiasm is exactly what we wanted to come from this project.

We soon called lunch and i suggested that Claudia, leah and Josh all go for lunch while Miso, Kaitlan and I move all the equipment over to R19 for Josh's projections and interview. I just wanted to get everything moved over as efficiently as we could so i didn't mind staying back for lunch. Kaitlan and Miso offered to help which was even better. We got everything moved over pretty quickly but then realised we needed lights for an experiment that Kaitlan and I had dreampt up, inspired by Olafur Eliasson. We ran arund the campus yet again trying to find the perfect lights. Eventually we were granted three LED lights from equipment hire along with three stands which was perfect. We didn't actually end up using these to their full potential but they were fun to experiment with.

We didn't intend for this to happen but the overall palette was very pink. We liked it none the less it just all oddly worked out that Josh wore a pink shirt and we brought in pink drapes to dress the chair :) We thought this look worked well for Josh as he was such a colourful character. The sit down interview went really well as he had a lot to say! We did, for all interviewees, have to cut out questions asked and put in text over the footage for it to make sense. This didn't look particularly good and wasn't ideally what we wanted to do but we knew that having the context of our film was more important at this point. We knew that we could achieve the visuals we wanted through animation. 

Our last few shots were of Josh standing in front of his own animations projected over him. This worked so well, especially in R19, as it looked as though his animations were a part of him physically not just mentally. We loved these shots and were very excited to put them in the final edit.

Overall, out group had our problems but we were soon to resolve them. We worked well on location and interacted wonderfully with our subjects. I am happy with the final outcome and proud of what we managed to achieve despite our setbacks.