Ever had someone steal your credit for doing a good job? Well, Johnson does it not take it so well when Anderson steals his credit for the report. Not at all…
Credits
This project would not have been possible without the help of these amazing people.
| Jimmy | Anderson | Jimmy is a professional photographer and runs a photography YouTube channel that you should definitely check out! |
| Celina | Boss / Camera | Celina is a great make-up artist and costume designer and if you’re into fashion, cosmetics and theatrical outfits, check out Fables In Fashion/Camera |
| Violet | Skipping Girl | Violet is a talented artist and creates lots of arts and crafts and pretty things on her Violet LeBeaux YouTube channel. Go check it out! |
Make sure to check out their YouTube channels and subscribe to support them!
Lessons Learnt
This was a pretty fun project to shoot, not at least because we got to use a ton of fake blood to splatter around!
It was the first physical fight scene I ever shot and while I think there is a ton I could have done better, I always come away a little bit more knowledgeable about what (not) to do.
Here are few things I took away from this project:
Audio audio audio!
You may have noticed how the audio quality at the start is rather awful. It is dull and there is a lot of room noise in the recordings. This was caused by me recording the audio with my Zoom H2N recorder, placed on the table in between the boss, Anderson and Johnson. I should have a look at getting a small shotgun mic, maybe the Rode VideoMic, to capture my audio with less unwanted ambience and echo. I could also have simply shielded my recorder a bit better to make it record more ‘directional’.
Watch your depth of field!
Shallow DOF is great for dramatic closeups, but when people move around, it is a challenge to keep everything properly in focus. Avoid opening the aperture all the way simply because you can. Try to keep it a bit more closed (if light permits) to keep all the relevant elements in your scene in focus. In an emergency, you can always add DOF in post production.
Watch where you place your tripod!
Notice how a lot of shots in the ‘office’ came out rather shaky, but not the good type of shaky?
My floor is rather soft and so every step we took made the tripod shake rather badly. While this works in some scenes, in many shots it just makes the shot look rather amateurish. It would have looked much better shooting with a shoulder rig or keeping all shots nice and steady and adding some more elegant shaking in post production.
Check your exposure!
Duh! Still, it keeps happening that I end up with shots that are too bright or too dark and they end up very hard to integrate nicely into my film.
I might have to invest in a little field monitor since the LCD on my 5D MkIII does not seem to be sufficient to check DOF or exposure properly during the shot, especially when shooting outside in the sun.
Whenever you shoot a project, look at it afterwards with critical eyes and determine which elements you did not like. Then try to remember so you can apply your knowledge during the next project to improve your skills over time!
