STORYTELLING: Camera Workshop - On Location

Photo from our location shoot

Also on Wednesday we had another camera workshop with Ferg. This one was a bit different though and was outside on location. Our location was the carpark outside the studios. I was in a group with George W, Connor and Danny and our idea was someone who had escaped from a building and was trying to contact the police.
We thought of this because we were setting up next to the carpark in amongst the trees and an old mobile.
We started with Connor as the escapee
and as the camera moved around the building he slammed the door shut and ran down the steps and into the trees and attempted to ring 999.
While we were setting this up and working out what exactly to do, Ferg reminded us

Mobile on our location

that we needed to check the location for health and safety. We need to carry out these checks in whatever location we are ever in for the risk assessment so it was good practice. The steps Connor was running down especially as they could have broken at any minute for all we knew. Also in our area we had a huge branch which had already snapped from the tree but was leaning on the ground by the top of the branch and leaves. It seemed pretty sturdy and it had been there for years but we had to take it into consideration for our safety. There were two ropes hanging down from it too, which were tempting to hang on and pull but that would have made the already-broken branch worse, therefore we stayed away from them and didn't use them in our film. I was on sound and George was on the camera. We struggled with the wires coming from the boom and the headphones as they kept getting caught on thorns and things on the grass, so Ferg went and got a tascam for us. This did help as we didn't have any wires connected me to the camera so George was free to move how he wanted, however it was tricky getting the camera rolling and the remembering to press record on the tascam as well, as with the boom it would record with the camera. Nevertheless, this was good practise for the real world as we would need to roll more than one piece of equipment at the same time for a production. The clips that I managed to look back at were pretty good so I am looking forward to seeing the piece together once I've edited it.

Below is my film:

I was proud of us for this as it was the first proper time when we thought of some sort of story and worked out how to film it and edited it all together. Some bits aren't perfect in this as there is background noise in some clips and not it others so it doesn't sound quite right. However, i'll talk to Ferg about it and see if I can do anything to make it a bit smoother.