Major Project - Diary Room Test Sequence & Location Recce
Assessing Steven's Garage & Blocking Out The Diary Room Sequence
Today was all about getting to spend some time on-location in Chatham at Steven's Garage - the location we plan to use to shoot our 1 on 1 interview with Alex to be included throughout the documentary, colloquially dubbed the 'diary room sequence'.
Steven is someone who Alex has known for several years at this point, who reached out and offered to help us during the racing license shoot day, shortly following Alex's practical ARDS test at Brand's Hatch. He seemed excited for the project and offered to not only provide a shooting location via his garage, but also give Alex a chance to race in a single-seater track car at a media event day later this month (Feb 27th). While this wasn't in our plans initially, we figured it would be naive to turn down the opportunity and committed ourselves to documenting the experience regardless. As early production on 'DreamChaser' begins to progress, it's becoming increasingly apparent that an extended cut will be necessary following our fulfillment of our uni-related commitments.
While we were there I was also able to get some hands-on experience with a 'Track & Dolly' set-up for usage on a Wide Shot (W.S.), chosen for it's unique and fluid panning effect during the interview segment. Alex will also be clip-mic'd up during this entire sequence, ensuring that we have the clearest audio possible given the controlled environment. This was also something we tested today to ensure that this would be viable on the actual diary room sequence shoot day; given that we only have access to the Panasonic DVX200 cameras during limited time-slots, we knew that we would have to come up with an alternative solution to capturing raw clip-mic audio during the production of the documentary, given that there is such a reliance on clip-mic audio throughout almost every scene. In order to address this issue, we discovered that we can plug 3.5mm clip-mic jacks directly into an iPhone, therefore allowing us to capture raw, high-quality audio natively within the iOS Voice Notes app. This way we can have multiple clip-mic's recording audio during any given scene, whilst simultaneously concealing the microphone effectively by asking the interviewer/interviewee to simply place the phone in their pocket.
The shooting itself went well and we were able to get a lot of useful material that will no doubt inform our creative decisions in relation to this sequence going forward. One of the things I noticed was that due to the limited space, I did not have much room to adjust myself during the camera movement, leading to some less than desirable camera wobble or inconsistency during certain shots. This is something that we plan to address directly going forward, both by ensuring that there is more room to maneuver around each-other come shoot day, as well as booking myself in for another practice session with the T&D on March 5th.
We had Connor helping us during this shoot which was nice to have, he's an effective camera operator from the work that I've seen and enjoy having his presence on set regardless. In this case he was set up on a Close Up (C.U.) from a 65 degree angle, allowing for us to cut in closer during times of particularly emotional or emotive tension. Following our test shoot, Alex was required to sit in the single-seater in the garage in order for Steven to take necessary measurements and make seating adjustments in time for the February 27th media event. This allowed us to get a lot of good pictures and b-roll footage that could be used throughout promotion.
Today was all about getting to spend some time on-location in Chatham at Steven's Garage - the location we plan to use to shoot our 1 on 1 interview with Alex to be included throughout the documentary, colloquially dubbed the 'diary room sequence'.
Steven is someone who Alex has known for several years at this point, who reached out and offered to help us during the racing license shoot day, shortly following Alex's practical ARDS test at Brand's Hatch. He seemed excited for the project and offered to not only provide a shooting location via his garage, but also give Alex a chance to race in a single-seater track car at a media event day later this month (Feb 27th). While this wasn't in our plans initially, we figured it would be naive to turn down the opportunity and committed ourselves to documenting the experience regardless. As early production on 'DreamChaser' begins to progress, it's becoming increasingly apparent that an extended cut will be necessary following our fulfillment of our uni-related commitments.
While we were there I was also able to get some hands-on experience with a 'Track & Dolly' set-up for usage on a Wide Shot (W.S.), chosen for it's unique and fluid panning effect during the interview segment. Alex will also be clip-mic'd up during this entire sequence, ensuring that we have the clearest audio possible given the controlled environment. This was also something we tested today to ensure that this would be viable on the actual diary room sequence shoot day; given that we only have access to the Panasonic DVX200 cameras during limited time-slots, we knew that we would have to come up with an alternative solution to capturing raw clip-mic audio during the production of the documentary, given that there is such a reliance on clip-mic audio throughout almost every scene. In order to address this issue, we discovered that we can plug 3.5mm clip-mic jacks directly into an iPhone, therefore allowing us to capture raw, high-quality audio natively within the iOS Voice Notes app. This way we can have multiple clip-mic's recording audio during any given scene, whilst simultaneously concealing the microphone effectively by asking the interviewer/interviewee to simply place the phone in their pocket.
The shooting itself went well and we were able to get a lot of useful material that will no doubt inform our creative decisions in relation to this sequence going forward. One of the things I noticed was that due to the limited space, I did not have much room to adjust myself during the camera movement, leading to some less than desirable camera wobble or inconsistency during certain shots. This is something that we plan to address directly going forward, both by ensuring that there is more room to maneuver around each-other come shoot day, as well as booking myself in for another practice session with the T&D on March 5th.We had Connor helping us during this shoot which was nice to have, he's an effective camera operator from the work that I've seen and enjoy having his presence on set regardless. In this case he was set up on a Close Up (C.U.) from a 65 degree angle, allowing for us to cut in closer during times of particularly emotional or emotive tension. Following our test shoot, Alex was required to sit in the single-seater in the garage in order for Steven to take necessary measurements and make seating adjustments in time for the February 27th media event. This allowed us to get a lot of good pictures and b-roll footage that could be used throughout promotion.
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