Back to Uni and Welcome to LVL5!
Welcome back to my blog after a long hiatus! And welcome to LVL5!
It’s been a long time since my last blog and even though nothing has been going on here, I can assure you that a LOT was happening after my last blog entry and especially during my summer break. Because of that, I’ll give a short recap and hope that I’ll be able to expand one thing or the other in another blog entry as time passes on.
For the first, after our hand-in of A Good One, we students were asked whether we could improve upon the film as we would possibly be able to enter this into the RTS Awards. We tried to reschedule another shoot but failed gloriously on numerous attempts, which is why we decided to take it on again at the beginning of LVL5 when everyone is re-energised and university life a bit calmer. Whether we will be able to pull it off this time, will be the subject of another blog post in the upcoming two to three weeks, so hold on and look out for it.
Secondly, I was lucky enough to be taken on as a lighting trainee at a BFI-funded independent production called ‘Looted’ which will approx. be broadcast around the turn of this year at BBC. Due to the nature of my contract and reasons of confidentiality, I am unfortunately not allowed to disclose any content, footage, images, names or documents, but let’s just say that it resulted into a major learning curve for me as I was kindly taken on by our gaffer and best boy and shown around the entire lighting equipment.
Apart from the strict set hierarchy and the practicalities of working on a professional set with about 35-40 crew members, I learned a lot about the differences between American stands and C-stands, how to discern various sizes of Polyfoam just by a combination of numbers, how to safely rig and take down floppies or lights on a double-wind-up when working alone, differentiating knuckles from proper arms, floppies from flags and nets (single and double), and all the possible off-label uses for black wrap and chickenwire.
And even though my job mostly consisted of waiting for long stretches and then being able to quickly burst into action gathering, assembling, disassembling, and returning equipment in matters of less than a minute, sometimes only even 30 seconds, I was learning much, much more than I did in any project prior.
On my last day on the project, I even got to know a professional cinematographer who happened to help out at the project and he kindly offered me to be my mentor in cinematography aside from uni to pick up pace and improve my learning curve even further. And while I was not able to return to that offer during my time abroad for summer, I will take it on once I settled in a bit more and let you know about any development in that regard.
But until then, I will first tend to properly setting in at my new flat and a reading of my module handbooks for the upcoming term.
After all, preparation is the key to success.
References:
Bear Glass Blog (2017) Chicken Wire Glass [online] Image taken from: http://bearglassblog.com/chicken-wire-glass/ [Accessed on 24 September 2018]