Over the years, I've had to had many, many hard-edged life lessons drilled into me. Over time though, my brain does a good job of forgetting all those lessons and I tend to make the same mistakes over and over again. Remembering this from last year, I checked out my old production file on the Mac and discovered this little gem - an extensive list of all the things I need to be aware of when working on set. As I am currently working on another short film at the moment, it was a great opportunity for me to re-read this list and make mental notes about what to take into account before our shoot next Friday.
To give you a better understanding of the context within which this list was written, you can check out the TV1 label which houses all the blog posts I created last year related to the shoot, the link for which is here.
What I learnt on set:
NEVER leave the creative decisions to the last minute:
Not insuring that I had properly considered which take of Lara’s performance we were going to use for the filming drastically reduced the overall quality of the film. Because I did not think about the implications of hearing my voice in the recording, we were left with the serious complication of trying to erase my voice during Luke’s performance which proved to be impossible without a reshoot.
ALWAYS film ambient sound and wild lines:
Not having these clips made it really difficult to fix the sound problems encountered when attempting to erase my voice during Luke’s performance. If we had had wild lines filmed at the set, they could have easily replaced Luke’s hacked speech. The ambient sound clips would have also helped with blending the wild lines.
NEVER record wild lines anywhere but on set:
By not recording Luke’s lines from the exact position we had him in during the hacked take, the sound recording we eventually did get was too close and sounded like it had come from a recording in a studio. Even with all the post work we did on that clip, it still sounded like it had come from another place and did not work at all.
ALWAYS have at least one other experienced person on set:
Having Arthur on set made all the difference. His presence was what got the film done in such a timely fashion and why we did not have to worry about lighting errors or shots being out of focus like many other groups did. Ultimately, I’d prefer to have someone who has experience as a production assistant. That way I would know all the important decisions that need to be made about the production will not be something I need to worry about.
SAFETY FIRST:
No matter how pressed for time we are or how cold everyone is or how hungry they are, it is vital that safety comes first for both crew and equipment. After nearly dropping the camera twice and nearly throwing Arthur’s back out at the same time as well as doing stupid things like putting the camera on the tripod on top of the camera boxes, there were many a times when we definitely jeapordised our own safety for the sake of the production. Whilst nothing seriously went wrong, the fact is it could have and better safety measures will need to be put in place next time to ensure those “nearlys” are non-existent.
SPONSORSHIPS:
There is such a thing as too much food when it comes to working on set. What would have been much better would have been to think about what type of food everyone wants and have it all arranged to be picked up on the day of filming. Collecting food over a series of days only led to there being a excess amount of food, particularly fruit, being left over at the end of the shoot. Had we just had Subway, Dominos, the fruit from one day and maybe some snacks from the fruit and nut shop on both days, we would have been perfectly fine.
DON’T be afraid to talk to your tutor about ANY problems you are experiencing:
Having Robin as tutor got me through the whole thing knowing I had someone who understood how frustrating it was to film with people who had no experience whatsoever and did not seem to have the same work ethics as I did. It’s important to know when to ask for help.
Get to know your crew:
It was only until my laptop was stolen that I found out how much of a great crewmember Louise really was. At the beginning, I just assumed that she had no experience or previous training in the film industry, hence her reserved attitude at the beginning of production. Eventually I found out though that she was just shy and apparently had all these ideas but felt too scared to voice them. I knew Roland was useless and he only proved that to me again. Deanna I had a bad feeling about from the beginning and she too proved to continue that until the end of production. Needless to say, sometimes I am right in picking out people I know will just be useless. However, that does not mean everyone is useless. Give everyone a chance (unless you know them). They may surprise you.
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