For our two-line script group shoot, Jeevan, Tristan and I set out to shoot a meeting between two characters. This was the first time we used clapper boards and the shoot turned out to be a great lesson in group shooing. I think the main element that I took away from the shoot was the hierarchal structure on the set. Which I soon realised was extremely important to ensuring that the shoot ran both smoothly and efficiently.

For this particular shoot we had Tristan as the Director, Jeevan on boom, Aria helping us out with the slate and me on the camera. The main thing I noticed is the possibility of time wasting on set. With so many people all needing to cooperate at the one time, so many things could go wrong and or waste time. I think the most important element of our shoot wasn’t setting up the camera, framing or any other technical element but the evident hierarchal structure that became apparent on set. For the first 15 mins Jeevan, Tristan and I wasted so much time setting up the shots and messing around and it was until Aria (who wasn’t in our group) took control and got us organised. At this moment I realised how important it was to assign tasks and to stick to them during the shoot.

As the shoot progressed I could sense that the three of us started taking ownership of our ‘stations’ and despite me forgetting to turn the camera mic on (again) and a few other hiccups, I thought the shoot went really well.

For my two edits, I wanted to make one with both Larissa Josh and one with just Josh drinking water. Once again we didn’t find the time to record foley so I went with the recordings from the boom.

Whilst editing, I noticed that we could’ve framed a number of our wide shot of Larissa walking in. There was too much headroom on top of Josh’s head, which resulted in both Larissa and John looking cut off and smaller then usual. I also noticed that we kinda messed up John’s eye line, with Josh looking to the right in the close-up and left the wide-shot. Luckily because we weren’t showing Larissa’s eye line it didn’t look too evident.

 

In my second edit, I focused on John drinking water, which I thought was a relatively interesting concept. Seeing we didn’t record foley, I was keen on making sure the sound of Josh drinking the water was overtly prevalent during the scene, I thought I did this quite well. I also thought that we framed a lot of those shots quite well, especially the opening wide shot of Josh standing against the wall. I thought that looked really good having the green bottle i’m the middle of the frame and looked really good visually, with the green bottle in the middle of the frame dominating the clip and Josh slightly to the left. There might be a little too much headroom on the wide shot but I thought it worked out establishing the space.

Overall, I thought the edits were secondary two the actual experience of working as a group on set. Unfortunately I didn’t manage to heed the lessons taught in this class as my next group shoot was a complete shambles but despite that minor setback, I do see the importance in the following structures on set.

AG