On-Set Exercise 1 - Evening Home
Our production on exercise one started as soon as physically possible, we formed out crew during the lunch break of the lecture the exercises were first announced in. We had our first meeting right after class, discussing each of our interpretations of the prompt 'Home' and comparing potential references.
(Bones and All ((2019) Dir. Luca Guadagnino) was proposed as an inspiration for its unconventional portrayal of ‘home’. Lemony Snicket’s A Series Of Unfortunate Events ((2004) Dir. Brad Siberling.) was also pproposed for its creative use of lighting in creating its key theme of home being people, not a place.)
We decided roles during that first meeting, we very luckily managed to form a group where we had someone who wanted to do every role, and small enough overlap that between the two exercises everyone was able to do their desired specialism at least once.
We held another meeting just over a week later, production was slightly delayed as I was away for a week and couldn't attend physical meetings. I didn't want this to get in the way of classwork at all though, especially not group assignments where other people were relying on my being there. Which is how I ended up joining a zoom call from the floor of the check-in hall in LAX.
On this first task I was the AC, but as we had no set pre-production roles I also helped out with various pre-pro roles, including helping develop the storyboards and the concept of the short. In this meeting we discussed equipment requirements and shoot dates so that I could book equipment as soon as I was back home. We also began discussing roles for exercise 2, as the very short turn around time required us to organise both on overlapping timelines. It was decided I would edit the first exercise and be DoP on the second, which was raised as a possible issue because of how much of a workload that would leave me with. David offered to edit instead, but editing is one of the things I want to specialise in, so I declined, thinking it would be better to have more support as a DoP than as an editor as the editing for an 8 shot film with a predetermined running order would really take no time at all.
It was decided during this call that David would book the equipment, as although I had done the least work up to this point, and it would be fairest I did the risk assessment and booking, because I had missed class there were certain items I couldn't book out. It ended up a few days later that David wasn't able to book equipment and asked me to instead, David and Chelize had worked together to create an equipment list that didn't require any new sound or lighting equipment so I could book it.
Our shoot day Friday the 4th of October, our prep day was the 3rd. Unfortunately, I had been given the impression I needed to be free on the 4th and 5th, not the 3rd and 4th, up until a few days before the production. I wasn't able to get the 3rd off from work, and so the camera prep work was carried out by Chelize, the DoP instead. To make up for this, on exercise 2 where I was DoP and Chelize was 1st AC, I did a majority of the camera prep. With the Sony FX6 there really wasn't much prep to do other than checking everything was working. We discovered unfortunately on-set during the equipment prep that we couldn't get the Nucleus M to work with our set-up. I tried again on the shoot day to get it to work, but because of the tight time limitations had to give up. We were only using static shots though, so focus pulling could be fairly easily done from the lens itself. We had booked a back-up analogue follow focus, however I mistakenly picked the URSA focus wheel rather than one compatible with the FX6. This was removed from our booking by the equipment team, however the first I was able to back and look for a new follow focus was within 24 hours of the shoot, and I could not book new equipment.
This was a mistake on my part, I did not thoroughly enough check the equipment list Chelize and David had created, or I would have noticed the incorrect follow focus before the shoot. I've learned from this to be very thorough and have multiple checkpoints for work passing through several people. I also know the equipment better now and will be able to tell in future what elements of the camera kit are not compatible with others.
On the shoot day we were slightly limited on time as we could only start once everyone who had Friday lectures made it to set, which was after 6pm, and as multiple crew members commute we needed to be finished before the trains back to Glasgow became one per hour. This gave us about 4 hours to work with from arrival to completely packed up.
We made the best of this time by setting up one shot as the previous was being shot, and filming with as efficient an order as possible to use the same lighting set-ups in the same room multiple times in a row rather than moving things between shots. One sacrifice this required was that we recorded one shot as the sound recordist/boom or Ailsa was recording sfx and room tone for another shot. We believed this would be covered with foley and sfx, however this didn't workout due to the tight timeline, and so one shot in the final project uses in-camera sound. Ailsa did a really good job recovering as much of the sound as possible though, and it doesn’t spoil the shot.
We did have a rather tense atmosphere on set because of the time pressure we were under and because we had only 5 people on the crew, so most people were doubling up on roles. There was a very stressful atmosphere and frustration was palpable. I think if we’d had more people with pre-production knowledge we would have been a lot better prepared.
We managed to get all 8 of our shots done to a very high quality despite this, most of them being completed in very few takes. We still slightly overran on time, meaning the two students who commute (myself being one of them) didn’t get home till very late.
I was the editor for this project, and I edited our short over 2 days before passing it over to Ailsa to sound design. The edit was very easy, we’d already had a storyboard going into the shoot, and since I received no notes from the director regarding the actual pace of the short going into the edit I decided to follow the storyboard and cut or extend each shot at my discretion. I did receive notes asking for the editing process to be very collaborative and communicative, however given we were already prepping for the next shoot which I was DoPing and directing and I work full weekends, I had a very limited time to complete the edits and it just wasn’t practical to continually send drafts back and forth. Instead I went all the way to creating a rough cut and sending it over to the crew for notes. I enacted a few of them and fixed a boom dipping into shot I’d managed to fix, but there wasn’t time to follow some of the more significant or structural notes. I think the short could have been a lot better if these notes had been able to be employed, however I don’t think it significantly suffers for their lack of inclusion. I think on a longer or larger project, feedback would be incredibly useful. For this project however the film was already in great shape and that time, I decided, would be better used setting up for exercise 2. Which we shot just 5 days after exercise 1.
I think we really succeeded at the main task of creating a sense of home through our set design and camera work. The deliberate avoidance of the subjects faces by the camera made the short easier for audiences to project themselves and their own vision of home onto the characters. The set was designed to be lived in, things were a little messy and used, and the environment didn’t feel like it was built for the shoot. I think the directing and the acting did a huge amount in creating a sense of home, as the actors were really able to convey the idea that this routine is second nature to them, and this activity is nothing new or particularly special. I believe what best makes a sense of home in this short is the complete lack of remarkability. There is nothing about this short that stands out as remarkable, which is how home feels to most people. Home is what you have come to expect, it’s somewhere or somebody you know and are used to. We chose our sense of home to not only be the location, but also to be the people and the routine. The routine of one person cooking while the other washes up and gets a movie prepared for the two to watch as the pot boils is what makes the characters feel at home, it’s a display of small acts of love. Despite the two getting home at the same time, one is happy to continue labouring to allow the other a break, knowing that they’ll return the favour but never having to actively ask for this. There’s no transactional nature to the relationship, just an understanding of needs and a want to look after each other.
In future, I think we should more thoroughly plan the shoot and ensure a realistic shooting schedule is agreed on, and we should have more careful comparisons of calendars to ensure everyone is available for critical days like equipment prep days. More time should be given to the edit, especially in receiving and applying feedback, as this was something which was not applied well on this task.
Link to the film:
