Acting for the Camera

Today in my Technical Elements of Film Production class we got to do a shoot in which we basically recreated the short The Lunch Date. We split into two groups of six, assigned production jobs, scouted for a location and got to work. My team ended up using my Canon T2i for our shooting camera so, as we were setting up, my classmate Justin Andrews and I snapped a few behind the scenes pictures. You can enjoy them below.

This is my tripod and Barry's camera rig attached to it. It was a little cumbersome at first but it ended up being good for recording sound.

Kristen and Rachel were 1st and 2nd ADs today. This is them working on some pre-visualization before the shoot.

This is Justin. He was camera operator for the shoot today.

Kurt worked as our director for the shoot.

Here is Kurt working on story boards before the shoot started.

Here is Adam Tuckey, our fearless sound man / boom operator. My favorite point of the shoot was a comment he made to Kurt after some of his vocal directions were picked up on Adam's mic during a take.

The director and the ADs work on the pre-visualization process.

Adam tries to figure out the camera rig. At least, that's what I think he was doing.

Katy was one of the actors today. She had a lot of fun before the camera started to roll.

I was also an actor today. I prefer to be behind the camera but it was nice to fill a different production role for once.

I've included two production stills of Katy and I in scenes from the shoot below.

Overall, it was a fun day. We had some issues getting the right sound equipment for the T2i and, because of that, we really didn't have as much time as I wished we would have for the shoot. Things were pretty hectic once we actually started shooting but, after looking at some of the clips, things turned out pretty well visually. Hopefully, when we are done editing the piece together, we will be happy with it.

Still, it was a fun exercise and a good learning experience.