Throughout the Single Camera Techniques unit I worked on 3 different short films. On 'No Good Deed Done' I was the Director and I was Director of Photography for both 'Exposure' and 'The Incident'.
Being a Director was challenging as it was a role I hadn't been in before other than making the Christmas adverts however they were very short pieces and only a few hours worth of shooting. Being Director meant I was in charge of the entire production. I would organise rehearsals and shooting times and I would have to sort out locations and other similar things. Other than our first shoot, which was badly organised and ended up overlapping with an 'Exposure' shoot, I personally feel like I did a good job, making sure all of the previously mentioned things were sorted well. I also think I did a fairly good job Directing the actors and crew, getting what I wanted from them. I feel that starring in the film also (due to a lack of actors) made directing more difficult and I wouldn't want to do the same again. Kane was my Director of Photography and I enjoyed working with him very much as he has a good understanding of the camera and managed to easily capture each shot I asked for with no issues. There wasn't a lot of co-operating or discussion about the shots, he just tended to follow instruction for the most part which was helpful in getting the shoot done. Becca was on Sound and she did a good job too. The sound captured wasn't great in the end but that was no fault of hers as we were in a noisy location so she did well working with what we had. Chloe was the AD and Rhys was the Production manager their roles both involved filling in paper work for example Chloe would get signatures for the location forms. Chloe helped keep the whole production organised and was very helpful in general. As a whole, I feel everyone working on the production of the film worked well together.
As for being Director of Photography, this was a role I'd had more experience in than directing, so I was more comfortable. I felt I did a much better job as DoP on both Exposure and The Incident. On The Incident I feel like I filled the role well doing everything I was required to do and working fluently with the rest of the team, especially Taylor, the director, as I think we have a good working relationship already from previously working together on the Music Video. We worked quite closely as we would discuss shots and create shot lists together before filming began. Having written the script for the short film and already having ideas for the visuals meant we could share ideas and come to a decision about what shots would be best. Taylor, being the Director, was in charge of the whole shoot and I think he did a great job controlling and organising the entire thing which, considering it was a party scene so we had a large amount of extras, is more difficult than controlling a normal shoot. Being on camera, I also worked closely with Jess who was on Sound. I was constantly working with her for the entire shoot as we had to co-operate making sure the sound was good for every scene, in some cases this took a lot of working together to avoid a lot of background noise and hissing. Also, as DoP i was in charge of lighting the scene and I think I also did a very good job of this. More so in the bedroom scene as I think I was quite creative with the lighting, coming up with solutions to light low light areas. As for the party scene, there are a few times when the shadow of the camera was in shot. Some of these I did not notice and some I did and we re-shot. The cause of the shadows was the use of normal house lighting and not using professional film lighting.
I was also DoP on 'Exposure', the film Kane was directing, I had a very similar experience as DoP on this film as I did when doing the same job on 'The Incident' however for this film there was less discussion about shots. I would maybe suggest a slightly different angle sometimes but more just setting up what Kane asked for. In a few scenes the camera can be seen in a reflection. Both me and Kane checked these shots before recording and still didn't notice. This is something to learn from and make sure we 100% check that there is no chance the camera could be seen in a reflection by positioning the camera correctly. Kane was very good as the Director, giving good instruction to everyone on set and letting them know exactly what he wanted which led to some very good scenes being filmed.
For 'No Good Deed Done' I was also in charge of the post production. I've actually really struggled with the editing of this short film, more so than other projects I've worked on. It's difficult because once all the footage we'd captured was put together, it didn't fit together as well as I'd hoped in some places, mainly because of the audio issues. The audio has unwanted music in the background and is not only distracting from what is happening but also makes cutting clips and putting clips together incredibly hard because the music noticeably changes. Despite the issues, certain parts of the film have turned out really well and look good when put together as full scenes.
