First Days of Are We Numb? Documentary

In our first day of shooting we filmed Kamran at his house in Watford, researching various "disrespectul selfies" and looking up Artist Shahak Shapira. We also filmed most of the VO for the documentary as the location was much quieter than other locations we would be filming at.

After that I drove everyone to Westminster in London where we filmed the intoduction of the Documentary and got a dozen or so General Views around london, such as Big Ben, the british flag and so on, these would allow us to tell the viewer where we are in a visual way.

In london we used two cameras to get GVs and one to also get Kamrans PTC, this allowed us to get more GV's and keep up a good flow.

Once we finished Kamran stayed in London and I took everyone back to Rochester, Getting out of London during Rush Hour took well over an hour and put us behind schedule luckily this was one of the only days we would be in London, however in the future I will keep this in mind.

The day went smoothly, however one of the cameras was on the wrong settings, which wasnt too much of an issues but a reminder to check the camera before and after the shoots just to make sure that we dont record unusable footage.

Me and George were the main camera operators and whilst I was filming Kamrans PTC, George filmed the GVS around london.

Our next day of shooting requires us to get the train to Hendon where we will talk to the Holocaust Survivors.

This became a problem as I had to drive up to Rochester with the equipment to get the train and leave my car at the Accomadions, a problem arose however as I got stuck in heavy traffic and even though I left over an hour before the train was scheduled to go I only got there a few minutes before the Train left, Trine, Gavin and George took the equipment whilst I paid for parking instead of parking at the halls.

However I wasn't in time for the train, so I had to wait 30 minutes for the next one, in this time I went to halls to pick up and extra tripod and parked at halls, getting to the location was difficult and I was over an hour late.

This was not a problem however as the location given to us was incorrect and we had to travel by bus to a different building, we were now quite far behind schedule, this was further compounded when the room we were given to film in was quite small. We persevered however and set up the lighting and cameras whilst Gavin sorted Sound.

A problem we discovered is that with DSLR cameras is that after 10+ minutes of filming they can cut out, With Trine's camera it automatically divides the file to save space but the other canon cameras would cut and require the record button to be pressed once again. This meant in some cases the could be a few seconds to a minute long gap in the footage.

After the Interviews we made our way back to Rochester and I returned home, Thursday was a day off filming, Gavin and Trine logged the footage and I stayed at accommodation that nights as on Friday we had a 3 hour drive to Birmingham.

On Friday we woke up at 5AM and I drove everyone to Birmingham, it was a long drive and tiring, however setting up went much smoother than it did on Wednesday and we recorded the interview with the social media expert without many issues. 

The issues were to do mainly with sound as the radio microphones kept picking up interference and there was two people nearby who kept talking loudly even after me and Trine went up to tell them that we were filming (Politely).

I have decided to add some laminated signs in my kit which we can blue tac up informing the public that we are filming and would appreciate if they could remain silent whilst in the area.

Setting a multi camera system up is becoming much easier, having the practise session before the filming began was a huge help in highlighting potential issues that may arise.

The downside to this sytem is that lighting is much harder, my fold up reflected has come in very handy in previous shoots which prompted Trine to buy herself one and one as a gift for Gavin for his birthday, all three came in very handy for the shoot.