Extra Work

Other than preparing to shoot the documentary, I've photographed and shot a festival to create a highlights video to promote the Hops 'n' Harvest festival at the Museum of Kent Life next year. I work close with the festival and I'm hoping it will continue to grow. I've heard that it got a very positive write-up from the Kent Messenger. 

I would like to make more of these short promotional videos, especially if the final edit goes down well.  I also feel it relates to wedding and events videography, which relates back to documentary style filming. Which is another reason why making a documentary will help me in my career and test my skills so far. 

By making these videos I always find out something new, by problem-solving and using my past experiences. As on the main day I was the only shooter (plus my camera broke on the morning in the same day), I had to completely change my tactics and use my single-camera skills. Which actually turned out to be better. On the rainy Sunday, was much quieter and I had Dan helping me so I focused on getting some good photos and any footage which I didn't have time to get the day before, such as people walking up to the stage. 

There were a few issues, especially with the stage and finding the right angles. But sometimes you have to work with what you have and just keep shooting because you never know what's going to happen (the rain even made us move up the field and into the beer tent with the music). I couldn't of storyboarded or created a shot list for a festival. I shot 1-2 songs of each artist only showing what would be in sync, i.e. the instrument and the vocal. In the rest of the set I got shots of the crowd listening, CU's which I can add in anywhere.. and this helped to build in the whole atmosphere of the festival. There were also various things going on around the festival, I didn't capture it all, and I always get some more ideas coming once I've finished shooting, but the main thing was the hops picking, the beer tent, and there was a second stage and lots of farm animals. 

Regarding sound, this was easy. A USB plugged into a very fancy sound desk, took care of everything. 

As I wasn't using my camera, I also had the issue of not having enough memory, so I had to keep uploading footage onto the laptop, totalling around 40GB by the end. Luckily, I always come prepared and brought the USB cable to do this. Thank god I'm organised! 

All in all, was a weekend full of problems, but I just kept shooting and got so many shots I'm happy with, it all turned out alright in the end. 

Here's a few still, without the final grading on. 

set-up shots

time-lapse still

on-stage angle

waiting for the action on the symbol

setting up the stage for the last act

setting up a beer glass for a pull focus

I did about 5 time-lapses over the weekend. But when the sun was going down, there were loads of children playing with the haybales, I thought it looked cool as silhouettes so I exposed to the sky and got various shots from a very low angle.