Our original plan was for the principle of photography to be spread out over three days. This was due to the locations we wanted to shoot at and our cast availability.
My responsibility was to carry out the role of 'Director Of Photography'. I have taken on this role in the past but this time decided to push myself further and complete the role to a higher, more professional standard.
I managed to do this by not just taking care and time in setting up each shot but by also using the manual settings on the camera. Looking back this gave the production a more professional look, it also made the post-production stage run a lot more smoothly.
I manually altered the iris to have full control over the exposure of each shot. This proved to be a good decision to have made, as the footage captured had a more professional look to it, compared to how it would have looked with the iris set to auto.
By manually controlling the focus, I was able to create a key opening for the start of our short film. I made the decision to pull the focus in, to create a more dramatic and tense feel to the opening. This decision gave the film a very moving feel, as it put the audience in the place of the patient. It also gave very little away, which made it very intriguing.
However the entire process did not run this smoothly, as we were faced by constant let downs from casting. Ellie was put in the position of ensuring the cast were available on the day, as she informed the group she knew people in acting schools. The idea of this was ideal but it did not turn out to be the case on the day. Luckily we had planned in extra time to allow for any push backs like this.
What should have been our first full day of principle of photography, was then used for completing test shots. Looking back, this did make the actual shoot quicker for the real day but was still not ideal.
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The next session we had booked for principle of photography was supposed to have been with our main character at Cogges Doctor's Surgery. Ellie's casting had let us down again today and we had no choice but to use her (who should have been our producer) as the main character.
This was not an ideal decision to have made but we had no other choice. This put a lot of pressure on the rest of the team as Ellie was not taking on any of the producer role and this was now passed on to myself. I worked closely with Joe on this day in setting up the shots and ensuring we captured everything we needed as we only had one day with the surgery.
Overall I feel the day went quite well and ran quite smoothly but still felt the use of Ellie made the story quite unclear.
As Ellie has not had much experience of acting, especially in-front of the camera, a lot of shots had to be adapted to suit her capabilities, rather than what was originally intended. This can also be seen throughout the final edit.
Due to the unorganised casting, this put a strain on the sound of the production. We had an original plan for Thalia to be monitoring the sound but instead had to use her to hold the boom in place. I felt quite frustrated with the production after this day but knew there wasn't much we could do. I just had to focus on ensuring the professional look of the film would make up for the lack of experience in the acting.
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The last of our three intended principle of photography days also started on a low, as the male lead that Ellie had arranged also let us down. It was when she told the group we had no male lead that I'd learnt a lesson not to rely on others for something so important as actors and to have back-ups in place.
Ellie arranged a last minute friend to play the role of the male but as it was so rushed the costume was not what we intended. Ellie told the team she had appropriate clothing for herself, yet this was also not the case.
Myself and Joe had to take on practically every role in the production as Ellie was too caught up learning her lines last minute and Thalia "didn't want to take on the role of monitoring the audio".
I have also found working with people that are not aiming as high as I am, don't put in the same amount of effort. As a result of this a lot of rolling cigarettes and texting were taking place, wasting valuable shooting time. It was then no surprise we were caught out when it started to rain.
This downpour put us even more behind in our schedule, which meant myself and Joe had to call off work, to be able to complete the principle of photography.
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We used our extra day to complete the principle of photography but unfortunately the weather was not on our side.
Throughout the morning we managed to complete the indoor scenes at Ellie's house and used the afternoon to complete the rest of the outdoor scenes.
As the rain started we agreed to film our last scene, which was to be filmed at the church for the morning of our first edit session.
I have fully learnt from the principle of photography stage not to fully rely on all team members as unfortunately some people will let you and the team down. It is also essential to have back up people / actors in place to ensure no time is wasted.
On a positive, I have also learnt a lot about manually controlling the iris and focus on the camera to achieve a professional looking piece of work.
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