Nine Scenes Nail!

Today, we set out to shoot nine different dialogues within a day by shooting one two-minute-scene out of every script we produced so far and thereby swapping our crew roles. The only catch was that each crew only had 40 minutes to shoot this dialogue out of at least three different angles.

Since this productive and time-sensitive task needs a lot of preparation, we already gathered on Tuesday and assigned all the roles to each and everyone of us - be it either actor, camera op, sound op or runner. As it was foreseeable that we would be short of two people, I was soon assigned to play a part in every production to keep everything running smoothly, thereby gaining as much experience as possible and establish something that resembles an initial workflow.

So apart from naturally being the director at my own piece, I was actress for Lynley's and Nathan's scene, posed as camera op for Hannah and Adam S. and worked as a sound op for Chloe, Has, Katie and Craig.

I thereby not only learned how effective you can be within only 40 minutes (which is highly reassuring for further projects), but I was also able to refresh my knowledge on the AVC-camera and its functions, like e.g. focus, white balance and SD-card formatting, and was also able to train how to properly and uncomplicatedly put up and otherwise install the Manfrotto tripod.

I also established a better feeling on where to stand if you operate the boom so that you don't cast shadows on cast or background and on how close you need to (and can) get to the actor without being in shot or otherwise losing valuable volume.

This was particularly helpful since I still tend to overthink or overcomplicate technical installations out of fear that I would break the equipment. It's one thing to observe how others use the equipment, but it's quite another to actually being put into the responsibility of using them without being constantly guided.

But I furthermore learned the value of a proper storyboard and a shot list set up in the actual shooting order. I was highly surprised by the sheer amount of time we were able to save just by compiling the documents. But the greatest help in that was actually colour-coding the corresponding shots in both documents.

Since I find it way quicker and easier to comprehend and compare different documents with the use of colours, I used colour-grading as you can see in the scans above. This saved me and my camera op a lot of time which would otherwise go into discussing and communicating shots.

It also helped a lot that I drew up a couple of extra shots and angles just in case we would finish early. Since our crew managed to finish the three mandatory shots and still had 12 minutes left, I did not waste any valuable time on thinking up another angle but could comfortably return to my shot list and storyboard and use the shot which I deemed best to complete the material.

Finally, I am only left to state that this exercise, though exhausting as it was, was invaluable to me in getting hands-on experience and further lose my fear for the use of technology. I was able to grow accustomed to using the equipment and to develop a first kind of routine to it that takes a lot of stress off my mind.