I have had to think carefully about the crew situation since because of the lockdown I only have access to 2 crew, that is my mum and my dad. I am in all the shots that I am filming, in one of 2 ways:
1. presenting to camera
2. trying out different camera moving shots and being filmed doing so
I can, and will, still set up all the shots, and direct my mum and dad as to what to do, i.e. be cinematographer/director.
For when I am presenting to camera, I need a Boom mic operator (my dad) and a camera operator (my mum) to watch the screen and make sure that the boom mic is not visible in shot. I tried turning the screen of the camera towards me so that I can see what is being filmed, but in my test footage I found that the screen is too small to see properly. I had thought that I had noticed all the times that the boom mic came on shot but I hadn't, which I think is because the screen is too small. I also tried holding the mic myself but that doesn’t work either since I need to be using my hands to make gestures. I have a small Rode VideoMicro mic, with a Wind Muffler on it. Although it is fairly small it is too large to attach to any of my clothes. I investigated buying a small lapel mic but decent ones were pretty expensive and also there were a large number of conflicting reviews. Before we went into lockdown, My Dad and I had been intending to go to the Media Production and Technology Show at Olympia in London last week 13th and 14th May to look at filming equipment as an 18th Birthday present for me. Although I was still able to do research into quite a lot of equipment, e.g. slider tracks and tripods, choose appropriate ones, order them and get them delivered, I really wanted to actually try out lapel mics before spending money on them. Which is why I fixed my Rode VideoMicro and my small recorder to a broom handle and plugged in a pair of headphones as a makeshift boom mic. Which I need a Boom mic operator for.
For the parts when I am filming me filming, I also need an "actor", someone to sit on a seat or stand as I film them using different camera movement techniques. That means that I only have one person as crew. I got round that by deciding to do voice over for those parts to explain what is happening so that I don’t need a Boom mic operator. It makes sense since I will have on screen at the same time both the footage that I am filming and the footage OF me filming, so by using a voice over it allows me to comment on both and how they relate to each other. But I still need a Camera Operator to film me filming.
So, I need times when both my parents are available. My dad is definitely not available during the week due to work, and he also has to work some weekends. Part of this weekend was a narrow window that he was available. He thinks he has to work next weekend and he won’t know for sure until nearer the time.
So I really needed to go all out last week to get everything ready for actually filming rather than concentrating on the website, since I will have other time to update my website, but if I missed this filming window then I could have big problems.
Because of the various neighbours having building work done, filming in the garden has been difficult too. I had got a run through of the garden filming done last Saturday 9th May when my dad was available. I had intended for that to be a test run through, and to refilm that either in the woods or in the garden when the various builders are not around and my other neighbour isn’t doing the major building work themselves too. But there are now a number of reasons why I don’t think that will be possible:
1) The builders and my neighbour are still making a lot of noise
2) The woods have got busier again, especially the bench, which I think is probably due to the change in the lockdown rules so that people are now allowed to spend longer outside, and they are allowed to sit down and rest for a lot longer. So, the bench is very busy. It took a long time to get the footage of me filming in the garden, and I don’t think I could reasonably hog the bench for that long. I did a bit of test filming to try out filming using manual (not automatic) like Tom had suggested, with no audio and not filming myself filming, just using one camera to film my mum sitting on the bench looking at the view, and even that took quite a while and people kept wanting to use the bench. I think that although some of the lockdown rules have relaxed, they have not relaxed enough for me to hog the bench.
3) I am limited in when my dad is available.
So, I decided that, under these circumstances, I think that my test filming last Saturday may actually have to be used, which I am not overly happy with. If we weren't under lockdown then I wouldn’t have these extra restrictions since I would have access to more crew and also to a lot more potential locations. But even in real filming things like this happen and everyone has to adapt, find innovative solutions that were not their first choice, and sometimes it can even end up better. I'm not sure that I think using the test footage from the garden will be better though.
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