DOCUMENTARY - SHOOT DAY 1 -UCA ROCHESTER - CATFISH MERCHANT

Our first day of filming was on 9/04/19, which took place at UCA Rochester.
Today's shoot was mainly to get some cut-aways and a piece of the presenting filmed.

I arrived at the campus at 11am, the original call time was 10am but I had an emergency in the morning, I had the risk assessments all ready but I had yet to have them look at by Andy who is in charge of the risk assessments for the campus.

When I arrived Katie and Taz were waiting for me so I dropped the equipment at the front and made my way into the reception area, I explained to the team that I had to get the okay before we started to shoot, I gave the up-to date scripts to Katie and Taz and said to them to go through them to see what we needed to get on that day, I had two risk assessments to drop off, one for the day we arrived and another for the 3rd of May.

Needless to say Andy wasn't very impressed when I said that one of them was for the same day, but I ensured him that we were going to be very aware of our surroundings and that we would keep clear of the exits and not be filming whilst it was lunch time, he also asked if any of our tutors was going to be with us? which baffled me a little because we have never needed to have a chaperone before. Getting the risk assessments signed off was the most challenging part of the day and took around 20 minutes which cut into our short time, but finally I had it done and went to tell the group exactly how long and where we were allowed to film, we were pushed for time as we only really had an hour.

I asked Taz (as she is the director) exactly what she wanted me to do first as we had planned to get some shots through the corridors and get a PTC, she said that we should start on the lower 2nd floor of the campus, as this is where we intend to do the interviews in the second shoot week, and that we could do my PTC down there as well.
The script states that we were going to film outside with me walking into UCA but it was raining and we could always pick that up when we go back there.

We got to the 2nd floor of the campus and Katie set up the camera and Taz mic'd me up, Taz blocked me out and what I was to do is to walk tight along a window (with clothes behind) and first just look in, she said that they would then track that shot, we didn't have a track and dolly, so Taz worked closely with Katie to get the framing and lighting correct for that shot, Taz said that she was worried that the camera reflection may be seen but I didn't see any of the footage so I am assuming that we were clear on that one.

                        Below Taz working with Katie about how she wanted the shot to look.

Before we started to shoot I asked taz to get a picture of me for costume continuity.

I was then to do my piece to camera, Taz asked Katie to get a decent depth of field to the shot with a photo in the background for a focal spot.
Taz then directed me as to what she wanted to see in that shot, I was to walk into a spotlight (walkie talkie) then stop and finish my dialogue there, the reason she asked me to do this was so that we had some good lighting, as all the lighting is different in the basement of the university and it gave it more of an artistic look.

I did a few takes of the PTC and Taz mentioned that I was talking too fast, I think it was because I was trying to remember my lines and getting them out too quick, so I slowed it down and hopefully, it looked okay, but I will remember that for our next shoot days! learn my lines.

After the PTC sequence we moved to a corridor which was highly lit with LED lighting, Katie found it hard to get a nice colour balance on the camera and we tried different colour cards (not real ones just some folders that I had spare but had to improvise) it didn't work, there is a setting on the camera that Katie has used before but she couldn't remember how to do it, I'm not sure how the lighting looked in the end but I think she was happy with the results.

On this shot I was just to walk down the hallway looking around, we only did one take on a wide as we had to stop filming due to it being lunch time so we had to wrap, we are going to get more shots of UCA when we return after the holidays.