Multi Camera Filming - Reflection

We arrived early on Wednesday to film our multi camera project of Hairspray.

We first started off by packing up all the equipment in the Media room to be transported down to the Performing Arts building. We tied all the wires up, placed them in boxes, packed the mixing desk up, packed all the monitors up, put cameras in the bags and decided which tri-pods we were taking. With 6 of us packing up the equipment in the gallery; it was done in no time at all. Then came the time to transport everything downstairs and into the back of a car so we didn’t need to walk it all down the performing arts, with it being in the car it made it much easier.

When we arrived we then had to unpack everything again, but when we arrived they were still rehearsing their closing song, so we couldn’t immediately go in and start setting up and had to wait for them to finishing singing.

Then the time came to unpack the car and set up the cameras and the mixing desks and the monitors. With everything being connected to the mains there was lots of wires that were going to be lying around and some would need to be taped down so no one would trip over them. We also required tables to put all the equipment on but the tables that were already in the theatre were too wide to use as there would be no room for us to move around ones everything was on it and everyone was moving around, so this required carrying narrower tables all the way from media.

There was four cameras to set up in different positions, one in each corner, one in the middle so we could capture wide angles and one of the floor in front of the middle one so we could capture close ups.

While the finishing touches with the equipment was happening some of us sat down and watched the dress rehearsal so we knew what to expect when we actually filmed it. After the first half, we all decided on the roles we were going to do during the filming, and we were all assigned two jobs, so we would do half of filming and half being the floor manager or on the mixing or directing.

The jobs that I was assigned were floor manager and cameraperson. The most difficult job to do was the camera as I was sat on a really uncomfortable floor and my back and legs began to ache and also it is very difficult to hear the instructions from the director through the headphones as it was very quiet and it was especially hard when there were singing a song. The floor manager job was by far the easiest and towards the end of filming nothing went technically wrong and I had very little to do.

So overall the filming and everything went very smoothly and we had no difficulties apart from when one of the monitors went off and a few of the wires fell out of cameras.