Shoot Day 1 – 12.05.2025
On Monday 12th May, my dad and I had planned to arrive at the uni for 8:30 to unload the 1st load of equipment which included the lighting gear picked up from Stuart Hoddinott (Wildfire Lighting) on the Friday beforehand – we actually arrived closer to 9:30. We went through reception (informed them that we’d be using the dance studio, as it turned out Ed from the uni hadn’t actually told them we’d be there) we then unloaded using the door which goes directly from the side of the building into the studio. After we had emptied the car with the following equipment we headed to college.
At college we loaded the projection boards that had been stored behind reception – they only just about fit in the car. I then went to IT to pick up some projectors.
Once I’d picked up the projectors, I realised that one of them only took VGA, which led me to search the entire arts building for a VGA cable, which took about 2 hours. I eventually found one in the box that I’d first looked in. I then had to track down 10 Showtec PARs in the college, which are usually absolutely everywhere; however, I only managed to find 8 around the building. I believe that there were others in the theatre, however performing arts were busy doing run-throughs and I could not get in. So, I ended up taking 2 down from the media studio rig.
Then, after about 2 and a half hours at college, we went back to the uni to set up. We went for lunch at about 2:30, where we met up with the cast and took them back to the studio. At this point, we still hadn’t finished, so the cast had to wait and get sorted with lyrics and have a look at the costumes, etc, whilst my dad went to JT Dove to pick up some wooden battens to build supporting frames for the projection surface panels. These were then built using a saw and a staple gun from the toolbox we had brought with us. Unfortunately, we didn’t manage to get the test shots we’d planned to do
Communication with the cast
Shoot Day 2 – 13.05.2025
On Tuesday 13th, we’d planned to start at about 11:30. So my dad dropped me off at college in the morning at 9, I then prepped for shooting, including finalising some shots, getting paperwork together, etc. We then headed over to the uni at about 11:25 ish. We then set everything back up, remapped some of the projections as they had slightly drifted overnight. Then it was just a case of beginning filming. We broke for lunch at about 12:30 for half an hour before recommencing filming. After filming was finished (about 45 minutes behind schedule), we began to pack up. We had planned to finish filming for 3, however, it ended up being closer to 4, meaning we had just under an hour until the college closed and we still needed to pack down and return the lights, camera and grip equipment as well as the heap of cables we’d borrowed from college. We also had planned to meet Stuart from Wildfire at 6 to drop off the equipment we’d borrowed from them; however, we had to push this back by about an hour.
Overall, it wasn’t too bad of a day, we managed to get most of the shots I’d planned on doing done, and we worked collaboratively to fill in the gaps and come up with some new and interesting shots.
