I've just spent two evenings shooting at magic hour (where you get about an hour of good light between being too light and too dark) and a hectic morning in a church (where we again had to shoot everything in an hour) getting a short film shot. It was made very quickly and cheaply with a minimum crew but we were blessed with the weather and beautiful sunsets which if nothing else made it beautiful just to be there.
I shot on my little Mini DV camera (Panasonic NV DS-27) which i bought cheap off e-bay. It cost about £40.00 and has served me well. Because its old it has manual over-rides for everything and in low light its great to be able to get the exposure you want rather than the typical washed out general flatness that the auto exposure thinks is right. Also you don't get that annoying auto focus thing where it keeps looking for the contrast and going soft and then coming back into focus. All in all I'm very pleased with this camera and although its a bit of a dinosaur compared to the modern HD cameras, it still gives images that have a certain charm.
The finished film looks like an animated chocolate box which is kind of what I wanted but would never have dreamed the extent to which it happened. I don't think I'm someone who is too romantic really but the script is and I thought it needed to be steeped in atmosphere which Heysham certainly gave me.
I decided that in order to get it shot in the time available I would dub the entire film so I didn't have to worry about the background noise when I was filming and if i hadn't made this decision it wouldn't have got shot at all (also the sound capabilities of the camera are pretty limited). I have got an assembly edit where I've had to cut around the sightseers up there as they walk behind the actors heads during the close ups (by some force of will it all got done) and they all made loads of noise. I'm really pleased with the assembly as I wasn't sure it would all cut together but it does. One of the extremely pleasant things I always find is that an awful lot of people do try to stay out of your shot if they see you filming or at least they don't linger if you are polite and ask them nicely to move out of the way, but they are never quiet (and why should they be? They don't owe film makers anything).
The good thing about editing without sound is that its like cutting a silent movie. You are always cutting for the visuals rather than the audio. Also post synching means that you can pick the sound completely independently of the image and get what you want for both. It means that I can hopefully create the atmosphere by adding the sounds of waves when in realty the tide was miles out when we filmed and even though it was shot at dusk when all the birds and bees have gone to bed I can record all my atmos tracks in the middle of the day and give it a summer feel. The dialogue is going to be a bit of a bitch but I'm half Italian so dubbing sound is in my blood (at least its in half of it).
I had a lovely relaxing day yesterday getting an assembly together and am very pleased with the way it's come out. I was worried because I only got one shot of a really crucial moment and then the light went. We hadn't really rehearsed it so the actress just jumped up unexpectedly and said her line and by the grace of God i caught it on camera. it looks rough but that adds a certain something to the whole thing.
The actors have now watched the film and seem pleased with it all and we are planning to record all the dialogue next week and then get recording all the other sounds as well. As i type this its pissing down with rain and the forecast for the next few days isn't too good so I only hope we can get our atmos tracks to sound like summer at all or else it'll be odd having chocolate box shots of Heysham and the sounds of a hurricane in the background. No birds and bees there.
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