Today I arrived at 9:15am to wallpaper the hole over and set up all the camera equipment etc. The shoot started with a skateboard shot of Ray being thrown into the prison by Charlie. The shot took a couple of takes but it came out really well, and the Director and Cinematographer agreed. We did multiple takes of a few scenes, such as Ray getting angry due to where he's been placed, which was a very strong performance by Ray as I felt he showed the anger within his character very well. Most of the shots were static on a tripod or pans. One shot that was meant to be handheld had to be changed as it was virtually impossible to get a good, smooth camera movement, so it was placed on a tripod which actually turned out very well in my opinion. The Samurai Blade turned out very useful for the shoot as it allowed not only me but the other members of the crew to view the footage at the same time as me. Due to the screen being a much higher resolution, they were able to pick out little problems I couldn't, such as exposure.
We overrun our schedule slightly at times due to underestimating the time it would take to set up camera, lighting etc however once everything had been set up, the shots were achieved quite quickly. One issue I had was a simple pan up from the floor where Ray was sitting, up to the wall where Ray would stand after moving upwards. This was difficult due to the fact that the height I had to go to was very close to the very end of the wall, meaning there were a couple of failed attempts at getting it right. I also operated the other camera we had, the Canon XF305, mainly for the breakout scene to get multiple angles. I had to change the exposure and white balance on this camera as it tended to give a very sepia-like tone to the set, whereas the white balance was just right on the Sony EX3. This was done with the help of Katherine, the camera assistant who was very helpful when it came to moving equipment, pulling focus, giving advice on shots, controlling the Canon XF305 and actually helping achieve some of the shots on the Sony EX3 with me (Skateboard pan of Ray's movement in the virtual world)
The breakout/virtual world scene was probably my favourite part to film. We had a multitude of angles for the breakout and I felt it came out really well on camera. This was also thanks to the great job the lighting team (Sahir and Tori) had done to make the light shine through the hole on the other side. It was also thanks to Anne and Chris, who suggested using the smoke machine when the hole had been broken into, to make it look really interesting.
The hardest shot for me was the last shot of the day, which was a handheld movement shot from the TV's, panning to Ray's face, moving backwards curving around Laura, who was pretending to be a camera operator, eventually being passed through the hole to Katherine, who would move backwards to show the whole set. The shot took a few takes as it was difficult for it to not shake when it came to giving the camera to Katherine, however after watching the takes back using the Samurai Blade, we found a few takes that came out really well so that when it came to the editing process, we had a few to choose from. This was also the case for every other shot, as I always wanted a few takes to be taken of each shot, to give the editor, Nick, more variety.
I feel the shoot went quite well even after a couple of mistakes on my behalf, however I felt I picked up from any mistakes I made and improved and moved on. I feel I brought my own style to the shoot also, suggesting a couple of different ways we could approach the shot with the camera, for example the movement from a shaky handheld shot to a smooth, static shot giving the same effect, but looking a lot more professional. I've learnt a lot from today's shoot and I even received some praise from Anne about my camerawork, which was really great to hear. Anne was a big help during the shoot, mainly for technical camera support and tips and tricks that could execute a shot better. Overall i'm pleased with my performance, and look forward to filming pick up shots tomorrow.
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