Documentary: Filming- Day 1

The script was complete, the characters were ready, and the equipment was booked. It was time to begin filming: day 1.

FILMING: DAY 1

Prior to day one I went over to the studios to pick up the equipment. For the three filming days I booked out a PMW, a clip mic, and a boom mic. I didn't book out a tripod because I had one at home and wasn't planning on using it much anyway. I also printed out all of the documents I needed for the filming day which included the script, shot list, and questions sheet.

Documents for filming

For the first filming day, it was only me who went to site to film with our characters. On my way to the allotments I received a phone call letting me know that unfortunately none of the characters were going to be on site that day. However, this wasn't a problem because it meant I would have the allotment to myself, meaning I could spend the day filming GVs.

Upon my arrival to the site, I met with Jules Ellis, who is in charge of the allotments. She told me that I had access to the allotment for as long as I needed. Two of the volunteers took me up to the growing site. I set the camera up and began filming. My policy for the day was film anything and everything. I began by filming some shots of the volunteers who stayed for a little while to water the plants. I filmed a few shots with them inside the polytunnel. Once they left, I was on my own.

I decided, because there was so much to film, that I would film the allotment in sections, starting by the polytunnel and working my way down the plot to the beehives at the end. I set the camera up on the tripod and spent some time walking around the picking area, filming everything I could see. I knew we needed a lot of GVs for this documentary and I didn't want to miss anything.

After spending some time in the picking area, I moved onto the field and began working my way down, filming all the rows of veg. I stayed on one side so the point of view was the same for every GV. For each shot I would start on a wide and then move the camera around a little, zooming in and out to get a few different frames of the same subject. This would allow more options in the final edit. Whilst filming on the field, I ended up getting a few good shots of some Bees which I knew would come in handy as there is a section about Bees in the documentary.

Finally, I moved to the end of the plot and filmed a few wide shots of the entire area, including a few where the camera panned down from the sky, as I knew I needed one for the opening. Then before leaving I headed over to a nearby bridge than ran over some train lines to get some shots of the trains that pass the allotments every so often.

Filming the trains

In total I spent about 4 hours on the allotments, on my own, filming as many GVs as possible. I ended up filling up the card and using all the battery life, so I had no choice but to stop filming. I really enjoyed spending time there. It was a very peaceful and relaxing place to work in. A part from the initial problem in the morning, I had no issues all day, all the equipment worked perfectly!

After getting home I began transferring all the footage onto my hardrive, which in the end took nearly 10 hours. This was something to keep in mind for the future, along with how long the card and battery last when filming, as we didn't have spares.

Transferring the footage

Overall the day was a success, now on to day two.