#offsreen

For all of our filming, we used Jin’s Nikon D80 as well as her dolly and slider. The tripod, and external lighting kits were all borrowed from the university.

(Jin’s Canon D80)

General Filming Overview (January 20 2017)

Jin and I had multiple different shoot dates across January and February. Because all of the participants for series 1 were confirmed, we went ahead and shot the interviews for each of them. Jin’s phenomenal camera work managed to capture the interviews using different angels and we positioned each of the participants differently after answering a question. Instead of just placing them in front of a boring white wall, Jin and I tested out various spots for our interviewees to sit in while we filmed them so that the background complimented the video appropriately (see the fonts/colour scheme section down below in postproduction). We shot each of the interviews on our university campus and in different flats of friends we know. While Jin handled the camera, my contribution was to prep the participants and manage the lighting. Several months before shooting we had master classes on both sound and light techniques that we used during our shoot sessions. Brendan Crehan, an industry professional led a workshop to teach us more on the use of diegetic and non-diegetic sound. He helped us prep for interviews and went in depth about various mic placements for effective sound recording. During these classes, Jin and I practiced constructing our shots and used appropriate lighting and microphones to practice setting up for our interviews. As theory suggests, “A lavalier microphone is the small mic you often see attached to the lapel, tie or blouse of news anchors. These small mics are ideal for recording audio from a single individual during an interview or presentation. The pickup pattern of a lav mic is generally omnidirectional, but because it is placed so close to the speaker’s mouth, nominal background noise be unnoticed once the levels are set on the recording device” (Harrington, 2011: 43). 

It was clear that we had to use a lav mic for our interviews but Brendan gave us a tutorial of how to use shot gun mics so we could get a feel of how both mics work. 

The trickiest part of shooting was trying our best not to capture the background noise. All of our interviews were in locations where there was air conditioning and as a result, the sound that we captured was not as clear as we hoped because of the excessive background noise. Luckily, we managed to fix that in the postproduction stage in Audition. For all of our participant’s interviews, we wanted them to be placed in different backgrounds that had neutral colours. Jin and I had agreed that our film would stick with a certain colour scheme and we wanted to make sure that our footage would gel well with the text on screen. My contribution in the actual shooting of the film was to ensure that the lights and backgrounds were perfect for the shot, placed the microphones onto each of our participants and help Jin by placing the cameras in different angles. 

On Set Experience 

My experience on set was simply fantastic. I personally found it to be the most fun and I enjoyed seeing my film come together in real time. Jin and I experimented around a little with backgrounds and move things here and there to ensure that we made best use of the space and so that we could get a clearer shot of our participants. 

I also suggested to Jin that we should film our participants from different angles as it was one of the features we liked from the above Buzzfeed video and so that our viewers could focus on our interviewees but not get bored of the same exact view. We integrated a bit of theory while onset to help us frame out interview shots. As suggested in Shoot to sell, “staying on the same shot, like a medium shot, of even the most interesting person soon gets boring. If a person is using their hands to communicate, include them, they help tell the story. During more intense or intimate times, slowly zoom in for a drastic effect. Frequently you see the shot framed so that the interviewee is looking not at the viewer but off axis, at the interviewer who is out of the frame. In this case there should be more space in the frame in front of the interviewee’s face than behind their head, otherwise they will look claustrophobic. In other words, they should be looking out of the frame with more room in front” (Smith and Miller, 2012: 133).

We used framing tips to help guide us and set up our camera in order to shoot our participants. 

Shooting series 1: We used some of these rules from the above book and found them to be quite useful as they helped us get very good and “not so boring” interview shots.  The whole point of series 1 was to instil in the viewers that there is a problem of too much screen time and so focusing in on the interviewees and capturing what they had to say was extremely important. A combination of good angles, strong lighting and neutral backgrounds ensured that we got clean and professional looking footage. Each participant was placed in one spot against a background that we liked for the entire interview. All we simply did was change the angle of the camera so that we captured their responses from different perspectives. However, on set we realised that the air conditioning was a big problem and caused our audio to have a lot of unnecessary background noise despite using good quality lav mics.  Unfortunately, one of our interviews with Mariah (one of our participants) was shot outside on a very windy day and as a result, we had to re film her indoors because the sound quality was just terrible. After filming our participants for series 1, we were ready to move into filming series 3. Unfortunately, we still did not find a specialist for series 2 but decided to worry about that only after filming series 3. 

Shooting series 3:

Series three was all about alternatives to screen time and we had to travel around London to get good footage to complete this series. Jin and I travelled to: Canary Wharf, Canada Water Library, Southwark Park, Sky Gardens, London bridge and even did a bit of filming in Jin’s flat. Before going out to film, we had made a set list of alternatives to put in the last series and that list generated our list of shots needed. From making tea to going for a run to even exploring local hotspots, Jin and I had a great time going around London to capture and film the various alternatives however, it was a bit more challenging than filming the first series. How so? Jin and I had to film a few scenes outdoors, and the weather along with background noises were all unpredictable. Jin and I planned each outdoor shoot by checking the weather in advance and tried to position ourselves in all of these locations where there were fewer people and cars. We were delighted to know that the footage we captured did not have too much unwanted background noise and since we planned on putting some music on in the background for series 3, we did not have to clean too much of the audio for this series in Audition. My biggest contribution for filming series 3 was organising the locations for the shoot and filming most of the shots at Southwark Park. Jin also introduced some new equipment for us to use while filming: a dolly and a slider. The camera work included moving the camera in unique ways for which we required this apparatus. For instance, one of the alternatives was to visit a local hotspot in the area and so we visited Sky Gardens in London to capture some gorgeous footage of greenery and flowers. We used a slider to capture flowers from inside plant pots and found it to be a successful way of of adding visual creativity to our shots. We also used a dolly as platform on the surface of a rocky concrete floor to create smooth movements of someone posting a letter inside a postbox. 

Finally after obtaining footage for series 1 and 3, we were ready to start editing what we had. And.. there was finally hope in finding a specialist.

Shooting series 2:

FINALLY and LUCKILY, a week before moving everything into Premiere, I managed to get in touch with a friend of mine who works for a technology company and has a minor in psychology. He was the perfect person to ask! It was extremely silly of me to have not remembered contacting him before. After very little persuasion, my friend Akash Hirani agreed to be our specialist. We filmed Akash in a meeting room at Landale House in Canada Water, with orange and yellow sofas and the background fit very well with our colour scheme… (see the fonts/colour scheme section down below). We filmed Akash from different angles and I helped brief him on what sort of information we were looking for. I had also set up the lighting kits around Akash because the room in which we filmed him in was fairly dark.  Akash gave us some insightful views on what too much screen time does to our eyes and outlined the social, physical and emotional (three subtopics) caused by too much screen time. Each of these subtopics was shot at different angles so that our viewers would not get bored and this way it would give them a three dimensional immersive experience. Jin and I planned to incorporate graphics and icons with each of the subtopics discussed and therefor planned our interview with Akash such that there was a little headroom as well as some empty white wall space in our footage so that we would place these icons smoothly in postproduction. 

(Me briefing Akash) 

(The sofas that we used at Landale House to shoot out specialist on)