Talking heads | A day filming on location

I had a hot and challenging shoot day yesterday.

Talking about lugging stuff around 🥵
Trip 1…

Trip 2…

Trip 3…

So many doors, lifts, security fobs, stairs etc.
Luckily I have these wheels.. (ideal for all the tripods and stands)

Not only was the job tricky work to get right under the time and space restrictions, but just unloading the car, getting it in AND parking in a city centre is just a nightmare. 😂

They don’t make city’s the easiest and most convenient place to have a car. I get why. But it’s just chaotic, restricting and expensive.
Not worse than London, but still. £12 parking for 3 hours? What kind of fresh hell is this? I bet London is £25 for 3 hours..

Anyway. Filming…

My mission was a multi-camera talking head/piece to camera.
The brief was pretty loose - the subject just needed to look well lit, contemporary and sound good.

The job was through my awesome brothers creative agency, who’s lovely client needed a last minute spot of video filming. Cue me. 👈🏻

The location

The room we had was a small office (see background in above) - so I worked first to block out as much unnecessary daylight from the window as possible. I did this with blackout material hung in front of the window (not very well pictured… I think I was taking it down in this shot…)
Anyway, the blackout worked well for what I needed it to do.

Up next are my awesome Aputure 120d set.

I used one as a back light, one as the front key and the last to fill the back wall to give it a nice gradient tone.
I kept a honeycomb on all of them. I like the way they control the light focus.

Rolling

I had three cameras rolling. A Panasonic GH5 (4K) a Sony A7iii (4K) and my trusty Canon C100mkii (HD) to capture audio and add a nice third angle. Quite an eclectic mix.

There was plenty of coverage at-least and subject looked sharp across everything, which is great. 👌🏻

Next?

My next job is to select the best takes and present them for consideration to the editors. I hope they actually like what they see. It’s difficult to relay the struggles in the space to get what we eventually got.

It felt like a real exercise in old school skills of good lighting, basic camera work and sound. Nothing like a small, warm, busy, time sensitive location to keep you on your toes!! 😆

Anyway, I’m just glad to be working to be honest.
Stick me in a sweaty box room with a camera any day and I’ll happily get on with shit.

Cheers for reading, @ashtv.