Construction Post 3: Reflections on our Main Shoot Session

There was a lot of pressure on us for the main shoot to get all the shots we needed there and then, as, unlike some other groups we hadn't managed to get usable footage from the test shoot, as Alistair had said he'd gotten our main chosen actor when he hadn't, so we'd had to find a quick replacement. Nonetheless, the test shoot had allowed us to try out some lighting and different angles for shots, so we felt fairly confident.

During the test shoot I'd been leading as director and main cameraman, so I felt in this shoot I should allow other group members to be more involved in those areas. Although this seemed a good idea at first, it became apparent Alistair was not able to control and direct the actors properly, and I failed to realise this until we came to editing.

Shot was wrongly framed. The dealer, (close right), was not supposed to appear
in this shot, hence the lack of illumination

Our lighting also didn't work as well as it could have, and due to a mix up with our shoot board we ended up missing a couple of shots, the main issue was an actors line appearing in two shots.
This resulted in us initially having to use recycled footage from the test shoot when editing.
As a result we've planned a back up shoot.

Lighting of Tim, (2nd from the right), was bad. We should have used a seperate
light for him.

It was only nearing the end of the shoot session I found the best intensity to have the ceiling fill light at. It meant that shadows of the actors were not cast onto the table.

Unfortunately, once we'd gotten all our shots and finished the session, Alistair decided to leave straight away rather than help packing up the equipment. Iggy and I ended up leaving half an hour later.