Lights, Camera, Wrestle!

Yesterday, I was on set as a cameraman in the gritty but always welcoming East London. Filming took place in Bethnal Green, special thanks to @Vampiherif for letting me borrow his camera and tripod. Filming varied from conversations, overdosing and fight scenes. In this blog, I am going to take you through my equipment and my experiences of the day.

So first off, my equipment for the day:

I was fortunate enough to have access to a Cannon, EOS 600D camera with an 18-55MM lens. Prior to this, the majority of my experiences with cameras had only been with Sony HD hand-held cameras, so I was really stepping up to a new level using this camera. I had to learn on the job with this one in terms of focusing, white balance and how I would actually be maneuvering the camera, of course no matter the matter, this should all be second nature to any cameraman. I was also given a compact MKC3-H01 Manfrotto tripod, this was great as it gave me maximum mobility and control in what I wanted to do. 

After arriving at Bethnal Green for 11AM, I was provided with a 16GB Sandisk memory card to record the days footage on, this of course had to be returned at the end of filming. We began the morning by running through the script and everyone's roles, while I prepped with other cameramen and the director, Greg Burridge about how he wanted camera movements, shot sizes and settings to be. We started by selecting the same settings for all of the cameras being used, this was 1080P / 25FPS and is one of the most common settings to use while shooting a film. 

Our first scene of the day was a simple tracking shot, for this scene I controlled the equipment my friend had let me borrow. I had the side view of this shot and simply slowly panned right, tracking a character walking across an estate while another camera followed him from in front, this led us directly into our next shot.

The following scene involved the 180 degree rule filming a conversation, my camera was placed on the tripod from a front perspective where you could see both characters framed in a perfect two shot. At the same time, I was equipped with a Panasonic hand held camera and positioned at the left hand side to film a close up on one character on the right, while another Cannon 600D positioned at the right, filmed the person he was talking to on the left. This worked out as a great shot and captured all of the angles and facial reactions we needed to later edit this into a master shot, shot, reaction shot. 

While working in the media industry and filming a movie, there is never a day without fun on the set of course. During a break, many other members of the cast for the day began singing and auditioning for classic boy band groups, including Backstreet Boys and Blue. In particular, Will also decided my tripod would make an awesome interchangeable shot gun and sniper, although clearly, he was right.

After our break, we filmed a scene involving a drug addict, a dealer and his henchmen. This was mainly filmed by one camera in the beginning and focused on getting close ups and very tight frames of significant actions, for example putting the needle together and his worried facial expressions while our addict looks out for trouble. After this, the entire scene was shot with two more cameras coming in again, my camera was focused on filming the addict and henchman's face, the other camera on our dealer with a main camera capturing the entire shot.

For our next shot, we went on to film the continuation scene from the conversation we had filmed in the morning, this involved adding two more people to the conversation which planted heated stems to later develop into big drama. This time shot from all hand held camera work and included a master shot of all four characters, another camera filmed the two closest to me, while I recorded an over the shoulder shot of our two main characters, throughout the conversation, up until it is only once again them left in the shot and they walk out of frame. 

Our next next scene had been the most anticipated of the day and actually caught the attention of the locals on the estate to come outside and watch. After a confrontation between two drug lords, a very realistic fight scene erupted, this was again filmed from three cameras covering the same areas, one being focused on everyone while two were focused on specific groups of people. This was a great experience for me in particular as it developed my abilities of anticipating when something is going to happen now and adjusting the shot and my own position to match this.

Our final scene, well, you'll have to wait for the entire movie to see this film after what happened, when its out, I'll let you know what happened while filming ;). 

Overall the day was great, I learned even more about continuity, framing and what its like to work on set for producing an actual movie, instead of just a media project. I'm thankful for both the opportunity, knowledge and experience I gained from this and it has only assured me even more, this is a huge part of what my future will involve.