D&AD Shoot

The Shoot

4.03.14

-The first day of shooting went smoothly, resulting in breath taking footage that fills me with confidence in this live brief. Together me and Bill Atwell this morning headed off to Uni to book out the equipment from Matt Burton, acquiring a Canon 5D MK 111, tripod, spare battery, charger, and a set of dedolight's.
We began by preparing the tank, adding the salt water, leaving it to settle, applying the bin bag, adding fresh water and waiting for the tank to settle for the final time. I set the camera to 100 iso shooting at 50fps to get a clear definition on the edges of the paint in the tank. Once the camera settings were ready it was time to prepare for the shoot in camera, setting up a good composition as well placing a straw in the tank for a focal point on the camera. Once we began the process of shooting the paint into the tank we knew instantly that it had worked properly, with stunning footage that looked like composited VFX. Horror was the first genre that we shot, the tank looked like something from the gates of hell, which was fantastic considering that we were looking to embody horror through different colours. However, although the tank looked amazing I couldn't help but feel that the camera wasn't capturing the true quality of what I saw before me. It was at this point me and Bill decided to head back to college to rent out a 120mm macro lens from the photography department. This lens really made all the difference, zooming in so much that a small radius in the tank would look like a whole galaxy breathing in the depths of space.

We continued filming on through the night, emptying the tank and starting the preparation process again. Several hours later and we began to film the second genre Sci-fi. We used a mixture of different materials in this scene, shooting dribs and drabs of gold and silver ink into the background of the tank, as if they were stars in the night sky, flittering billions of light years away. The results were incredible with fluent, peaceful shots that embodied the Sci-fi genre.

My only problem with the Sci-fi shoot today was my rookie mistake of forgetting to add 'Prussian Blue', an almost mid night blue that would have looked perfect in the background of a galaxy. However, I am very satisfied with the clips we got today.

05/03/14

- Day 2 of the D&AD DCM cinema shoot, today again was an excellent shoot, boosted with confidence from yesterday me and Bill began shooting from the early hours of the morning preparing the tank. The first genre we aimed to shoot was fantasy, which was one of the genres I was particularly looking forward to shooting, due to the colours that embody the genre. From emerald to sap green, deep purples and mystical blues, all of which was a concoction for a beauty display in moving colours; with results that were visually stunning.

The second take of the day was for the genre western. The idea was to create a background layer that would resemble a monument valley horizon. However, this didn't seem to work out with paint moving in it's own accord.