Day 1
Overall I am pleased with the shoot and we have come back with a lot of footage - hopefully most of it good and usable. My main aim for the first day was to get as many interviews as we could and work on the shot list in-between. This partly went according to plan as on the positive side I asked one of the women who works in the office if we could get a few shots of her working and a few cutaways of the office while asking her some questions at the same time. This then turned into a full interview in which we got a lot of very good stuff out of her ranging from financial problems to what she thought of Pam so I was quite pleased with this.
We also got an interview with one of the volunteers which was all right but not sure we got much stuff of any use out of her as she was not as talkative and a bit more shy than the last person.
We then sat down to interview Pam at the end of the day, which I thought would be good as the sun was out and it was quite warm and being the end of the day I knew Pam wouldnt need to rush off anywhere so I thought we get quite a good amount of information from her, unfortunately the memory card was full about 3 questions in and all the other cards were full as well so we had to stop. Luckily Pam said she would be around the next morning so we could carry on with the interview but it was frustrating to have to stop an interview full flow. As we were staying over night it wasn't the end of the world and we were able to buy some more cards ready for the next day.
Also on the first day of shooting I found out they were moving a pair of Meerkats back in to their old pen that had been done up so we were able to film them being released back into the pen which was nice.
we also got a lot of cutaways of different animals and some being fed along with cutaways of the refuge and volunteers working.
Day 2
On the second day we were able to get down to the refuge quite early to get the morning shots of the surrounding area of the refuge. We got shots of the fields, lake and also Pam's house and the refuge from a distance and it was a clear sunny day so I think the shots turned out well.
When we got inside we got some more general cutaways of the refuge and also the volunteers chopping and preparing the food. I wanted some more shots involving people interacting with animals so we filmed one of the volunteers massaging a big bird that was a Ground Hornbill and also got her feeding it a chick. We also managed to film most of the first opening sequence to the film which involves the Emu's being fed but not realising it's Emu's until the last minute. I think this went quite well and I was able to go inside the pen and get some close up shots of the Emu's eating (the camera person was too nervous to go inside).
We continued with Pam's interview which went well and I think we got a lot of stuff from her. We had a problem at the beginning though as someone had not pressed record on the Zoom so I had to ask her a couple of questions again which I think was not very professional, especially after the memory card incident, and also she didn't answer them as fully because she was just repeating herself and wasn't in the flow of it. Luckily the camera's record sound so if there was something useful said that we want to use if the quality's good enough then it's not a major problem.
When we arrived on the first day just as we got there the owners son Darren drove past and stopped to ask if I still wanted to film him feeding the Alligator, I had messaged him a week ago but had no reply so wasn't sure he would be able to do it so this was some good news. He works full time so is only available for about half an hour at lunchtimes so he said he would come back for lunch on the second day of our shoot to feed the Alligator. The cinematographer didn't feel comfortable with filming this so I took over, the sound recordist came in as well to capture sound and also work the Go-pro which we had attached to the end of the boom pole to try and get some close up shots of the Alligator and snake. It was a bit all over the place when we went in the reptile house to film because firstly the lighting is very dark, especially in the Alligator pen and also there is not much room around the entrance to the pen so I had to make do when trying to get the shots. I did manage to film the Alligator and you can see it even though the lighting in there is red and minimal, Darren offered to hold one of the led lights we had which helped a bit. He then also offered to get the Python out for us which was great as I managed to film it coming out of it's enclosure and it cam right past the tripod so I did film it but because the tripod was high up from filming the Alligator the angle is looking down on it but the Go-pro managed to capture it coming towards the camera. Overall I was very pleased with what we had filmed as I wasn't sure we'd get the opportunity to film one never mind both as they are probably the 2 most dangerous animals at the refuge so did not think the Python would be moving right past my feet.
After this we filmed more cutaways of the refuge including buildings, animals and volunteers working and then we managed to fit in another interview. I had asked the Producer to secure us an interview with one of the volunteers, Catherine and also the new manager, Jason. I had wanted to interview them separately but he got them to come both at the same time which I wasn't anticipating, as there were two of them I went on second camera and the producer offered to ask the questions. I think because I wasn't prepared for them both at the same time the interview didn't go as well as it could've done and it was quite a short interview. I think what did work well is because the manager had literally only been there a day it was nice for him to have someone else there to make him feel more comfortable but it might have been nice to see that vulnerability more if we'd interviewed him separately, I also think I could have dug a bit deeper with them if we had interviewed them on their own. When I get the rushes for this interview I will watch it when we get back and determine whether we need to do another interview with them as we will probably need to go down at least one more time to get everything we need.
I think we worked well over these two days and we managed to come away with a lot of good stuff. I think going with the cinematographer to the farm beforehand helped and with each shot she was asking me what to do and also stepping back from the camera and just allowing it to film without moving it or tampering with it too much. I did feel on the negative side to this is I was with the cinematographer too much and couldnt direct everyone properly like I should be doing as she would ask me to check every frame and also technical things like the ISO. I found this a bit draining as after to talking to Chris he told me I am only meant to say I want a mid-shot of such and such and then they go and film it. I am not a camera person and don't know all the technicalities of it so found it a bit difficult at some points when constantly being asked if it should be 400 ISO or 800 and sometimes I had to tell her to decide as I'm not the camera person and also she should have an opinion on what is best.
I also found it a bit frustrating that because of this she would not film anything I hadn't specifically asked for so if something interesting was happening with an animals or volunteer for example I would have to say film that as she would not anticipate anything or use any initiative. It would then take ages to set the camera up which meant that we would miss it. Also there was a lack of pro-activeness because if I was talking to someone or trying to arrange an interview instead of looking at the shot list or filming anything of interest she would just stand there looking at the animals.
I found throughout the shoot this was one of the hardest things, as because it is an interesting place and there's lots of animals sometimes people can lose focus and when I needed them they were wandering around or looking at animals and when the people are working there are very busy and taking time to do something for us I wanted to be ready as quickly as possible. This is something I have had trouble with on past shoots so did brief everyone beforehand.
Despite all this I am confident the footage will be a lot better than it has been at the previous shoots and therefore the editors should find it a much easier to do their job and also this should mean we don't have to keep going back to re-film stuff. I think we have some strong interviews and a lot of interesting footage of the animals and people there.
Due to looking at most of the shots I could tell that using a DSLR was better than the XF100 as the shots were much better quality as they were more clear and crisp and also show more depth of field, which especially looks nicer with the interviews as they don't look so flat. So I think it was a good decision made by the group to swap camera's. We will still have to convert it all though using MPEG Streamclip as the DSLR's record in H264 which is not the best format for editing on FinalCut.
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