Studio Shoot Evaluation
My draft post for the studio shoot is likely to be more detailed but I shall try and include what has happened in a more brief way.
After researching my role I had a very clear understanding of what was expected of me as Assistant Director. I did need to help a lot outside my role which was frustrating but useful as I gained a lot of knowledge from doing this. I believe the group communicated incredibly well and everyone was informed of what was going on by either myself, Chloe or Brodie. I tried to mitigate the script meeting between the "script writers" but the group ended up getting too heated and Chloe and I decided it would be best for her to write the treatment and script as she was the most informed about the idea as it was her own. I held a meeting with Avery, Alex, Jasper, Jen, Chloe and Cecily to have a clearer idea on aesthetic and try and navigate what people had to be working on over the study week, this was also a chance for Avery, Cecily, Chloe and Myself to sit down and work on the storyboard and lighting as a start but people had to leave. Meaning, Chloe wrote a version of the shot list which was then forwarded to Jasper and Cecily to storyboard. After a check up on our documents it was made clear that half of the storyboard wasn't up to scratch and Cecily completed this. I completed a call sheet and schedule for the shoot days at this point ended up being changed multiple times due to actors. With all this happening Chloe, Brodie, Emily P and Myself were holding auditions for actors. Myself and Chloe used the Freshers page to find actors through posting and managed to get four actors which Chloe and I agreed on the two we found best suited for the role. Unfortunately, due to timetabling we had a lot of issues with when we could have our actors which meant that our female actor was only present for the first day of shooting. At this point myself, Chloe, Cecily and Avery sat down and revised the storyboard and work out how we could cut down on the shots with our female actor in. The lighting diagram was given to me by Avery and was not very clear. At this point Avery myself and Alex sat down and talked about what was possible and what Avery wanted for the set. That weekend Cecily and I sat down together for Cecily to work on the storyboard and for me to work on changing the shot list and the schedule. We realized the logistics of the shots were still not working properly and spend a huge amount of time fixing this. After we had discussed the changes and Cecily had drawn up a new version of the storyboard, we had a new shot list, and schedule set for the two days. The set build was really fun, I helped out on hanging the paper on the walls, painting and Emily T and I worked on painting the lovely window red. I also helped with the clearing down after each day of the set build. The prelight was a bit of a nightmare. Due to some car troubles I managed to get down the hill and in for 12ish at this point the window light had been set up. At this point too Anne seemed to be directing Alex on lighting and was confused on why I wasn't helping to do the lighting and didn't know where all the lights should be going as she thought I was DOP. Chloe was working on her Maps and Networks and I wasn't sure where Avery was but Anne pushed me to navigate this second half of the prelight and set dress. Working closely with Anne we managed to change what was a very very dimmly lit set into something which would pick up in camera. The solution was to add some crossing key lights to mimic the on set lighting and another light to pick up the rest of the shadows on the set. I also worked with Chris to dampen the lighting on the inset lamp which was a nightmare too. I confirmed with Avery and Chloe once the lighting had been altered to something brighter and adapted the lighting to their preference. The shoot itself was very stressful as the schedule was ever changing due to actors needing to leave early and certain shots taking longer than anticipated. However, I feel as though I managed to organise this very well and the shoot was very smooth sailing. From having our female actor not being able to be present on the second day of shooting meant that our first shoot day was very long but I managed to keep a very sharp and positive mind set about it. We even pushed to add in some extra shots for good measure. Jen worked fabulously on the continuity between each take and placed everything which such care and detail. Alex worked his ass off and was 10/10 best gaffer. Emily P was a machine too and worked super hard to help every department and myself with a huge amount of things. Cecily also did amazingly as she was adapting from the storyboard quickly when things didn't quite work. Cecily and I worked well as a team throughout the whole shoot discussing what was working and what wasn't and being able to communicate that back to Chloe whilst she was working with the actors. And big thanks to Brodie for being able to direct a large group of people throughout the pre-production stages.
Overall, I believe that the shoot was successful and I was successful in my role within it. Putting a lot of effort in paid off in having such as smooth shoot days as we did. I'm not sure what I could have done to improve in my role but what I would like to take on board from this experience is how to plan effectively and to a tight time frame too.
After researching my role I had a very clear understanding of what was expected of me as Assistant Director. I did need to help a lot outside my role which was frustrating but useful as I gained a lot of knowledge from doing this. I believe the group communicated incredibly well and everyone was informed of what was going on by either myself, Chloe or Brodie. I tried to mitigate the script meeting between the "script writers" but the group ended up getting too heated and Chloe and I decided it would be best for her to write the treatment and script as she was the most informed about the idea as it was her own. I held a meeting with Avery, Alex, Jasper, Jen, Chloe and Cecily to have a clearer idea on aesthetic and try and navigate what people had to be working on over the study week, this was also a chance for Avery, Cecily, Chloe and Myself to sit down and work on the storyboard and lighting as a start but people had to leave. Meaning, Chloe wrote a version of the shot list which was then forwarded to Jasper and Cecily to storyboard. After a check up on our documents it was made clear that half of the storyboard wasn't up to scratch and Cecily completed this. I completed a call sheet and schedule for the shoot days at this point ended up being changed multiple times due to actors. With all this happening Chloe, Brodie, Emily P and Myself were holding auditions for actors. Myself and Chloe used the Freshers page to find actors through posting and managed to get four actors which Chloe and I agreed on the two we found best suited for the role. Unfortunately, due to timetabling we had a lot of issues with when we could have our actors which meant that our female actor was only present for the first day of shooting. At this point myself, Chloe, Cecily and Avery sat down and revised the storyboard and work out how we could cut down on the shots with our female actor in. The lighting diagram was given to me by Avery and was not very clear. At this point Avery myself and Alex sat down and talked about what was possible and what Avery wanted for the set. That weekend Cecily and I sat down together for Cecily to work on the storyboard and for me to work on changing the shot list and the schedule. We realized the logistics of the shots were still not working properly and spend a huge amount of time fixing this. After we had discussed the changes and Cecily had drawn up a new version of the storyboard, we had a new shot list, and schedule set for the two days. The set build was really fun, I helped out on hanging the paper on the walls, painting and Emily T and I worked on painting the lovely window red. I also helped with the clearing down after each day of the set build. The prelight was a bit of a nightmare. Due to some car troubles I managed to get down the hill and in for 12ish at this point the window light had been set up. At this point too Anne seemed to be directing Alex on lighting and was confused on why I wasn't helping to do the lighting and didn't know where all the lights should be going as she thought I was DOP. Chloe was working on her Maps and Networks and I wasn't sure where Avery was but Anne pushed me to navigate this second half of the prelight and set dress. Working closely with Anne we managed to change what was a very very dimmly lit set into something which would pick up in camera. The solution was to add some crossing key lights to mimic the on set lighting and another light to pick up the rest of the shadows on the set. I also worked with Chris to dampen the lighting on the inset lamp which was a nightmare too. I confirmed with Avery and Chloe once the lighting had been altered to something brighter and adapted the lighting to their preference. The shoot itself was very stressful as the schedule was ever changing due to actors needing to leave early and certain shots taking longer than anticipated. However, I feel as though I managed to organise this very well and the shoot was very smooth sailing. From having our female actor not being able to be present on the second day of shooting meant that our first shoot day was very long but I managed to keep a very sharp and positive mind set about it. We even pushed to add in some extra shots for good measure. Jen worked fabulously on the continuity between each take and placed everything which such care and detail. Alex worked his ass off and was 10/10 best gaffer. Emily P was a machine too and worked super hard to help every department and myself with a huge amount of things. Cecily also did amazingly as she was adapting from the storyboard quickly when things didn't quite work. Cecily and I worked well as a team throughout the whole shoot discussing what was working and what wasn't and being able to communicate that back to Chloe whilst she was working with the actors. And big thanks to Brodie for being able to direct a large group of people throughout the pre-production stages.
Overall, I believe that the shoot was successful and I was successful in my role within it. Putting a lot of effort in paid off in having such as smooth shoot days as we did. I'm not sure what I could have done to improve in my role but what I would like to take on board from this experience is how to plan effectively and to a tight time frame too.
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