1. What did you do?

Today was one of the most important days of the Film Academy, it was the day we shot our short film! This day was therefore very busy, so it was helpful at the start of the day being teamed up with Rob Speranza who is a film producer and therefore has had experience working on a film set.

The shoot day included many different activities such as: setting up locations, setting up equipment (tripods, sound booms, etc), making sure the actors knew their dialogue, changing locations to outside, recording voice overs, and actually shooting the film.

Because I have the role of the editor in the group, this would normally mean that I wouldn’t be doing a lot during the production, however because we only had 5 people in our group (two of which were acting) we were quite short on people, so I had to role of recording sound. This meant I had the role of recording all the actors dialogues within scenes through using boom microphones, and also recording the voice overs, which had to be done in a separate, more isolated room.

2. What have you learnt?

One thing I have learned quite a lot about is using sound equipment. This is because before the shoot we only had a short amount of time to get used to the sound equipment, but due to my role on the shoot day being sound, I was able to get much more experienced with capturing sound. One of the tasks this included was recording actors dialogue, which meant during scenes making sure the microphone was close enough to the actors the pick up what they were saying, but also making sure the microphone didn’t get into the frame, as this would ruin the scene. After we did all the shooting I also had to record the actors voice overs which meant going into a separate room, which removed the chance of people walking by and making noises which could disrupt the recording.

Another thing which I learnt was to improvise when shooting a short film as unexpected things can always happen. We had to do this twice within our production, firstly, when we first got to our location as before going there we thought it would have already been set out like a restaurant, but when we arrived on shoot day the location looked very bare, and nothing like a restaurant. This meant we had to ‘dress it’, searching for plates, napkins, glasses and even designing a board which had the soup of the day on it. The other time we had to improvise was when we arrived at our location (which was a cafe/bar within the Showroom) as we thought we would be the only team filming, however, in reality there was another group. This meant we had to firstly shoot all of our scenes which didn’t include any dialogue as we didn’t want to disrupt the other group, and would mean that by the time we had done this the other group would have left and we would be free to record dialogue.

3. How have you worked with others?

This day was probably the most important for collaboration as every person in the group had their own role (cinematographer, actor, sound, producer, director) which they needed to make sure they tried their best to deliver on to make sure the shooting was completed. I think our group worked really well together as not only did we adapt well to situations that we didn’t expect, but we also managed to complete everything on time, and even managed finishing half an hour early!

I think I managed to work well with others as when doing sound you have to be very collaborative with both the actors and the cinematographer. So throughout the day I would have to make sure where I placed the microphone was fine with the cinematographer, and also that I was able to position the microphone in a way to not restrict the actors performance (not too close) but also to be able to capture what they were saying at a suitable sound level. I also did other tasks within the production such as setting up the location, helping put up the tripod and advising how a scene might be shot.

4. What do you need to develop?

One thing my group would need to develop if we were to shoot another short film is to print off more screen plays. This is because on shoot day we only had two screenplays, which sometimes restricted us as the two actors would have to share the screenplay and then everyone else on the production would have to look at the same one. However, if we had printed enough for everyone to have this would have meant we would have been able to view it whenever we wanted, therefore reducing hassle, and it would have been much easier for the actors to view their lines.

Something else we also need to develop for the next coming weeks is the editing. This is because now we have all our footage we must decide as a group how we want it to fit together, and then this should allow me to start putting it all together.