How to Shoot a Mammoth

After yesterday's session, we surprisingly received an email by our lecturer who wanted us to organise shoots of ten two-minute-dialogues upcoming Monday. Since time was short and a tremendous task was waiting for us, we immediately sat down and assigned our various roles, chose dialogue scenes, created a shot list and a storyboard as well as organised a shooting schedule for Monday.

Regarding that this was a mammoth project compared to those we did until now (for every crew only had a total of 40minutes to shoot a scene of at least three different angles!), we were all naturally very excited to get on and get things sorted.

So far, I am currently posing as camera op for Hannah and Adam S., as sound op for Katie, Craig, Has and Chloe and acting in Lynley's piece while naturally being the director/producer/cinematographer of my own written dialogue.

The shooting schedule was determined as follows:

1st piece: Hannah

2nd piece: Has

3rd piece: Adam S.

4th piece: Chloe

5th piece: Lynley

6th piece: Katie

7th piece: Craig

8th piece: Nathan

9th piece: Mine

I set up a preliminary shot list for my scenes on coming Monday which was difficult for me to do since I had much more complex and diverse shot ideas in my head which I sadly cannot execute within the time frame given, so I'll prioritise getting the exercise done before overcomplicating things to much by wanting elaborate shots directly from the start. Plus, I think it's no shame in starting small and learning the basics than first aiming at the sky and falling like Ikarus did by overcomplicating things for myself.

Lastly, before updating our lecturer on the particular pieces of information he wanted us to deliver, I ordered an SD-card from Amazon for my project.

Knowing that we were limited time-wise as we will all be in future projects and client projects to come, it was extremely helpful to see how much lies in preparation and how quickly you can get things done. Quoting from the fictitious character Churchill from The Crown: "There is no problem so complex, nor crisis so grave, that it cannot be satisfactorily resolved within twenty minutes."

References:

The Crown. Episode 3. (2016) UK. Netflix. 4 November 2016 [online]