Final Major Project Unit: Production

Filming with Liz

Lauren and I stayed in Woking for a couple of days shooting with a lovely contributor, Liz. We'd shot with John to test the water in terms of style and how to work with people and learnt a lot. We have also shot with Dan, but only a interview which we'd use mainly for voiceover. But for Liz, we found out more about her and chose to shoot sequences first as they are the important parts to cover the interview and show use more about how the person lives. 

I created a page of shots, grouped by a couple of sequences based on our knowledge of Liz. We know she does crafts, so I got some shots as she worked. Then we set up for a interview in the same position, and found that she was a comfortable talker. She was talking whilst working on a card, so I filmed parts of her making the card, and a close-up of her. But, in the end, she found it too distracting to do both so she concentrated on talking to the camera, and we picked up the shot of her finishing the card later on. 

working on her crafts

I also google street viewed her house, and saw that there was a train line, and she had mentioned a canal which she likes to walks on. So after we finished in the house we went to the canal and got some shots of her at her favourite spot. Before going to a nearby field and setting up an interview with her sat on a bench. 

at the canal

The next day we focused on getting the more serious interview, sat in the living room, in a more traditional set-up. They were sat in the sofa in the middle of the room, with objects behind, window light in front of them, and I could adjust a dimmer switch above them. Which was a very ideal set-up.

Her husband also volunteered to be part of the film, so Lauren conducted his interview too. Typically I switched sides to Lauren so that his interview was looking left-to-right on the left-hand side of the frame, and Liz's was opposite, so they didn't match for the edit. I managed to get some shots of Liz's wedding rings, and we asked them to sit at their table-for-two outside in their garden. Overall, it was a very good place to shoot, as I could get a lot of GV's and cutaways of sentimental objects that Liz has on show. 

I didn't get all the shots explicitly to this shot list, as sometimes they don't work, but I improvise in many of these situations and find interesting angles.