The Projects
At the start of this project my original outline was to continue my learning process and development as a Cinematographer/D.O.P whist also looking at developing my writing skills; this is why I originally took on the role of writer for our Zombie film project, and despite the fact that we changed the idea and I moved back to the role of D.O.P; I’m still confident that with further development my early script work has great potential and the movement to from Drama to Mockumentary gave me a new avenue of filming to look at from the camera point of view.
The music video with Rob Sanchez I took on because I wanted to gain more experience within that genre and thought that working for Rob who had a clear idea in mind of what he wanted, it would give me good experience of working for a client that wants a specific product, which I feel in future will help with my job prospects and confidence with making music videos for bands.
Choosing to work with Joe Tippett and Robert Brice on their Sci-Fi short stemmed from the fact that the idea really interested me and I could visualize the film having complex camera movement and creative lighting, which appealed to me as a Cinematographer and also thought it would be great experience to actually work with the Lighting Department itself so I could grow to learn more about lighting in general and set them up myself, rather than relying on others to place the lighting for my desired vision.
Research
My overall research approach to all the project I was working on was solely from a visual standpoint and using my critical analysis of my research to learn and discover how I was going to shoot, light and set up scenes within all the project I was involved in; Over the last few years at college I feel that I’ve done plenty of reading as part of research and felt that it was time for a change with this project, from research films and then browsing the net for interesting visual research, I feel that my critical analysis of my research has helped me learn more about the world of the D.O.P and Cinematographer; with my research into watching films themselves I was always looking at the motion of the camera the style and mise-en-scene of the shots, and always asking myself questions like; Does this scene work? Why does this stand out? What element and why does it have the desired effect? My personal point of research that stood out and had the biggest effect on me was my research into Cinematographer Christopher Doyle; who summed film making up into just going out and using what you’ve got to film and not to listen to others as to how films should be made. This I feel shaped my approach to all 3 films; I don’t need someone to tell me how to shoot film, I had enough knowledge now and I’m confident in my keen eye for the visual aspects of film; so I relied on my own creative side to shoot the way I thought was best for each project not what some book or person would tell you how; what’s the point in that, I feel like part of a production line creating generic visuals when I have my own creative style to explore and evolve through experience.
Productions
During the production of my projects I feel that I worked extremely hard and pushed myself to the limit without overexerting myself beyond my breaking point; unfortunately there was the aspect of missing out on the final shoot day of the Zombie Mocku-Mentary, but that was due to unforeseen delays that messed up the schedule for that project, but other than this I thought that I managed my time and commitment levels to all projects very well.
The areas in which I think that I could have improved would have been the work with the Merlin Steadicam on the music video as I would have liked to have had much more time to practice and feel more comfortable with the equipment, though I did think that I did a pretty good job under the circumstances; with the Zombie Mocku-Mentary we as a group had been let down on a number of occasions by actors, extras and even our burlesque dancers, this I feel really hindered the project in terms of the original idea behind it, we tried to change the style to a student DSLR feeling rather than the polished professional approach we had first imagined and to a degree we as a group worked well to try and salvage our disastrously bad luck, I feel strongly that if it wasn’t for a college hand in then I personally would have stalled the project until we got the required commitment levels from all parties before continuing with the shoot; that being said I don’t think I would have changed anything with regards to my approach to the filming as I feel that I framed each shot correctly paying close attention to positioning of the interviewees and our director, so that their eye line was held at the right level.
My experience of working on the Sci-Fi short was where I feel that I was really able to excel and explore and learn my skills working directly with the lighting on set and gained great experience with working closely with a director to achieve the desired lighting set ups; it would have been nice to have an extra member on our crew, as there were times where I felt a little under supported, but on the whole I feel that our small crew help us concentrate on the tasks at hand and we as a group really pushed and asked each other of a high grade of film making and commitment levels that I don’t feel has been achieve prior to the project. The project had a nice balance of working closely with directors with regards to lighting and then been left all alone to set the lighting up, which I think gave me a well rounded experience and very challenging but ultimately extremely rewarding.
Conclusions
Looking back at the Zombie Mockumentary, I think that taking everything into consideration we as a group did a pretty good job and making a short documentary that even at 20+ minutes long, doesn’t feel that length; I would say that the as a whole it might not add up to much and doesn’t quite say enough about the social issues that we had originally planned, but after the screening to our peers and lecturers I’m confident that there is something in there that has a huge potential to be something unique. We as a group have taken on board some good critical feedback that we will look at revisiting in a re-edit; the main issue that I do feel we failed to notice and something I should have noticed was the attention to detail with the zombie make-up; this is not a negative on our Make Up Artist who did a fantastic job, but I should have spotted that we needed to pay closer attention to how it look on screen, this was probably missed due to the stress we were put under, no thanks to our numerous no shows from the cast. We’ve learnt that the area of asking actors to perform for nothing but experience is quite the minefield and that it would be a much safer approach to list casting calls as paid work in future.
After seeing the final edit of Rob’s music video, I was reminded of a discussion that I had with him when filming, in which I tried filming some of the texture nature of the locations we were filming at, he mentioned that we should just get on with the filming of each set piece due to the guerilla nature of our filming. I do feel that the music video would have benefited from some shots of the locations themselves, setting the scene. It would have also be nice to have worked with some LED on the night shoots to add something with more depth to the visual style of the video and of course as mention before I personally could have done better with my Steadicam work had I had more time to train with the equipment.
As for the Sci-Fi short, it’s hard to really criticize my work and the project as a whole, as everyone pulled their weight and went up and past our means to achieve the visual style of film. I feel that despite being such a small crew we really did work very efficiently to get all the footage that we required for the project; the small time scale also pushed us to work so hard to make sure our shoot was a success. This could be seen as a negative, given us little time to film so much in such a short space of time, though I really feel that this framework and timescale for the project really did get out of everyone on set, though it would have been nice to have an extra hand on set because there was a couple of occasions in which we as a crew felt a little spread too thin. Looking at the first rough edit, I’m extremely pleased with the style of the film and feel that this is my finest achievement yet as a Cinematographer.
Overall to summarize I’d say that taking all 3 projects into consideration I’ve learned so much from gaining much needed experience making music videos that will benefit my work with Crooked Brow Productions. Also now have gained experience with making a documentary and setting up framing of interviews and directing 2nd unit camera into capturing the cutaways required for the final edit; and finally I’ve gain so much experience with lighting and with LED lights in particular, which is now something that I can say honestly that I feel comfortable with.
