Final Doc shoot

Our final shoot was this Tuesday and we had 3 locations to cover so it was bound to be a tiring shoot. The weather was awful but as pressed for time as we are and as we are filming in winter we took what we were given, at least it didn't rain heavily.

We started in the church as it doesn't have a roof and it wasn't yet raining. There were two specific shots I wanted from this location and we managed to get both. First a long shot from the stairs (that and at the top step to the second floor which no longer exit!) of the guys walking across the precarious floorboards. Secondly there is some really cool apocalyptic churchy graffiti in a small square room, I wasn't sure how to shoot this and after a little practice managed to get a 360 pan of the room with one of the urbexers walking round. I went through the floor a few times whilst filming and ripped my jacket on the way in but apart from that the first location went pretty well, the light levels were better than we expect and we got quite a lot of footage.

The second location was a little tricky to get into, on our reccie only me and the urbexer got in, this time we gor our lighting woman through but whilst our director was outside someone approached us in a car and questioned him. The negativity of the guy worried our director so we decided to move on and cut out the location. We still had to get all the kit out which would take 5-10mins so I quickly grabbed as much footage as possible with the urbexers. Fortunately this location wasn't going to have a lot of screen time anyway and I knew the one shot I had to get, an out of focus shot of them on the bottom floor from a broken window on the second. It was however all hand held, hopefully I wasn't too shakey and some of it can be smoothed out in post but we should be able to get maybe 30secs to 1min of footage from the rushes. It was only going to have 1min tops anyway so thats not too bad, just a shame the shoot got a little usurped by a nosy bystander.
This is me setting the shot through the window

The third location was my least favourite but we had a lot of time to spend there after location two was cut down. I got a nice repetition of a stanley tools shot of a long room with one urbexer knelt in the foreground on the right and the other stood in the background on the left. I also got a really nice shot of one urbexer walking down a corridor and knocking the loose paint off the wall, this looked really nice and has the kind of motion and imagery that fits the doc perfectly. Steve (director) had a lot of shots he wanted to get from the location, it inspired him a lot, so I left him to work whilst I got some basic coverage as I couldnt see that much good in the location. This is one of the shots an urbexer got, we are hoping to use this pic and others in our final piece. The colour, contrast and focus of this pic are awesome!

So oveerall a mixed day but the footage has been pro res's and looked through and nobody thinks we need to do any more shooting so I guess THATS A WRAP!

Tutorial, reccie and a new shoot!

Last monday we had a tutorial on our documentary project, we had a small structure planned in which we use 3 locations framed by a urbexers "getting ready" scene however after discussion we decided to remove it. This meant that our Monday filming session was open so instead we went on a reccie and recorded the urbexers interviews.

On the reccie we looked at 4 different locations, unfortunately we felt only one of them was big enough to spend a whole section on. After talking with our producer and director it was decided that as the doc. is split into 3 parts, the past of urbexing, the present and the future of urbexing, mixing the three smaller locations would work really well for the final part, the future of urbexing.

We spent Wednesday filming in the best location, so we wanted to get a lot of stuff, we hope to fill a whole 3 minutes with the location so good coverage was important. Here is my shot list for the day:

X	#	SHOT	Action	Notes
	1	LONG	Urbexers walk up the top stairs	Into the main graf room Could try track up the stairs
	2	MED	Urbexers past window	Only see the mid
	3	CU	Urbexers face through window	So out of focus you cant see the face
	4	Long	Establishing shot
	5	2shot	One urbexer either side of the top staircase	Camera position in the middle
	6	Med	urbexer defacing something
	7	Long	Ext. shot of urbexers outside in doorways	One point perspective (like shot in SToolls)
	8	CU	Cam infront of face shot	Should get at least 2
	9	Long	Urbexers walking outside	Through the hole in the wall, track to hole.
	10	MED	Urbexers coming out of the basement	Show urbexers from the back as they come out.

We got most of the shots from the list as well as a lot of others, Steve also had a shotlist he forget to bring but worked of the photographs from the reccie to give him an idea of what to shoot. We also happened to bump into a graffiti artist that does a lot of work in the building. Although it wasn't planned it will work brilliantly in our doc as in the interview both urbexers mentioned occasionally bumping into people.

What I really loved about this location was that it has the same abandoned feel as Stanley tools but it is on a completely different scale. The whole location feels more homely and small, less industrial, it gives the location a different identity to Stanley Tools. The graffiti in the place is awesome, meeting the artist was really enlightening, it was great to see him work but the building itself has a lot of awesome features to exploit. For example we found a hatch in the top floor that we could see through, the stairs are perfectly centrally composed and look brilliantly cinematic, and the decay of the paint in some areas reflect the amount the building has withered in time. The flaking paint is something I really wanted to see in Stanley tools but never found so I am really happy with getting it in this location.

Hopefully we got enough footage to fill the 3 mins in that location as we are filming the three other locations next week. I need to make sure that in these locations we get;
More tracks
Defacing
Camera in front of face shot
Pans

Fingers crossed the next shoot goes well as the editing needs to be getting done as soon as possible with the deadline in a few short weeks!