Account #2: The Shoot - Part 1

Thursday, 17th November

Shooting time: 1 - 6pm

Location: School, filming studio

Cast: 

Taymour Williams - main solo artist

Sam Hindmarsh - hand double

Crew:

Paula - director and producer/location manager

Helena - cinematographer

Leyla - director and cinematographer

Grace - associate producer/location manager

Media guys (Luke, Matt, Scott, Dan) - Set design, lighting, cinemtographer

To relax our main artist, we started with his hand double for the CU shots of the hands playing piano to make Tay feel comfortable around the set. Here are the keys we looked up online for him -but in the end he was so good that he just listened to the song and found them out himself and even played them on a piano which didnt make a sound.

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Then we started to film the performance bit with Tay sitting on the piano and lipsyncing and we shot lots of different shots of performance to put in later as alternative shots. 

At one point we thought it would be cool to just turn the piano around! As you can see here.... potential for a digipak cover?! 

* pic piano tipped

About us as a team and the set atmosphere... We didn't set the roles for each of us before we began to film. But somehow our tasks and responsibilities just evolved and I think we worked quite well together, also with the media team. 

• Helena took care of the camera and the cinematography most of the time which she is really good at and has lots of experience with. She also contributed to the directing job and came up with lots of good shot ideas. 

•  I was in the directing position talking to the artist, giving him advise and some guidelines what to do, and also made myself responsible for the schedule and shot lists to check that we do everything we need in the available time. 

• Leyla was directing as well.

• Grace was busy with some late changes we made or difficulties we faced, such as supply missing props and she also took care of the playback working efficiently - as well as keeping the actor in a fun mood ;)

Evaluation

What went well?

Surprisingly, I thought a big issue would be the time management but actually that was something that was very well managed! Also, I was really pleased with our idea of scribbling on the sheet of glass infront of the camera, which looked better than I thought it would!

What was difficult?

I think, getting our solo artist into a comfortable feel infront of the camera was quite a challenge. It was our fault in some ways as we didn't spend a lot of rehearsal time with him and as he is not a singer or a musicien it is quite hard to act and sing infront of a camera infront of many people if youve havent done it before. So, that is definitely something I would address more attention if I would do it again. 

Also, our team sometimes wasn't quite the same opinion, it was 2 against 2 at some points and that just should not happen on the set, on the important day!

One of my favorite sequences...