Filming Commenced!

On Tuesday 19th February, we filmed on location for 'Steel Bells' at a local community hall. This was my first true experience watching a Morris dancing group practice their routines outside of their costumes. My expectations were met during the session, and the footage we gathered from the two hours we were there was of a reasonable quality.

Standard Tripod, fixed shot

I say reasonable quality, because we had a couple of issues whilst filming. The camera  on both the 550D and 600D stopped filming automatically multiple times. I searched the problem on google and it appeared to be the SD cards we were using. Put it simply, the cards we were using were not the correct type for HD filming, one way around this was importing the footage onto Natalie's laptop, clearing up the memory on the cards and hoping they would work again... fortunately they did.

Tripod, fixed shot - different angle

The footage we captured was fairly reasonable, we got a lot of footage from afar showing the group practising their routines. I mentioned that it would be a good idea to keep the camera rolling 30 seconds after they had finished their dance, as to capture their 'true' emotions and reactions to the routine they had just performed. Because one of our documentary's key aims is to portray a more 'human' side to the people involved, this was an important part to capture. As to whether the footage we captured is of a high enough standard to use in the edit, I do not yet no. Within the next couple of days I shall be looking over the footage entirely to create a rough edit to show on Monday.

Handheld, close-up shot

We went for a two camera set up, which allowed one of us to capture hand-held shots, and one of us to capture shots on the tripod. This offered us a variety and allowed us to capture twice the amount of footage with the fast pace of the dance/session.

Towards the end of the session, I decided to capture some MCU (medium-close-up) shots of the performances. However, it was difficult to get any effective shots of the dances themselves due to the fast pace of the dance, and the fact that they move around unpredictably and spontaneously.

Whilst I carried on with filming the dances, Natalie and Alice took a couple of the participants aside to interview them. Judging from some of the footage I have looked at, the framing and question responses don't seem too bad. It's a shame the building we were in was your standard, 'bland' place... I feel it won't be very visually pleasing to the audience when I begin to edit it all together. I'm hoping over the weekend when the Morris 'festival' takes place, we well acquire some richer colours in the visuals.

Interview - Tripod, fixed shot

It's worth briefly noting that a couple of the takes we shot appear to have grain. Hopefully this will be sorted out for the next time we're shooting!

Overall, we're pretty happy with the footage we captured on the first night of filming. We began early, and aim to have nearly all of the footage we need for the two minute and the ten minute peace by the end of the week.