Experiencing the magical world of film making

It was a cloudy day and the appearance of rain was getting higher by the hour, I felt small, alone and some what threatened. But it was this day that Adam would come over my desk and mention that I’ll be involved in the shooting of Briony’s epic film, Room at the Top of the Stairs. My mood somewhat changed and the clouds outside disappeared, I realized, I was able to control the weather!! After being told I couldn’t, reality kicked in and I couldn’t wait to be on set while filming this short film

Warning, this will be a fairly long blog, full of excitement, sorrow, sickness and love…yes love. The love for film making!! So before the film shoot, I had go to a meeting in the Hobart mountains to meet a guy named Joe. Along with me was Adam, Briony and Marcas. Joe was the camera operator for the film and he had possession of a camera unlike anything I’ve ever seen, they call it RED.

Here’s a brief history of RED camera’s; only been recently available, RED has given film makers a cheaper option for HD filming. Comparing prices of a standard film camera $100k+, RED is only $20k. So basically it’s targeted to those who cant afford the super duper Hollywood type equipment. But don’t let the price fool you, just because cheaper doesn’t mean you’ll lack quality. Already there are films that have been recorded on RED, for example the recently released (and my favorite Sci-fi movie) District 9.

Ba ba ba ba….now back to me. During this meeting I became more aware of my involvement in shoot, I was titled as the official Data Wrangler. A person who made backup copies of the recorded footage during the day. But little did I know i would have more titles appointed to me during filming. So our meeting ended and the clock started ticking down till S-day (shooting day) 50+ hours later I wake up at 630am…

Day one. I finally get to see the house in person (I’ve only seen photos) and my god it was big, it reminded me of a fun house I lived in but never existed. At the back of the house was the catering area, here I meet up with Adam who explained to me the days offerings. I also meet with all the film crew including…my master :-O Who’s the master? Adam had told me I’ll be the assistant of the audio guy, Mark. I called him master and he called me grasshopper. My role as the assistant audio guy was to write down every audio recording he recorded, so basically I had to be with the film crew, everywhere. To my surprise I meet with a follow pawn, Viven, she had to write down every video recording. She also happens to know me through my forgotten years of uni. We often had to update each other so we were always on track with the filming because one slip up could lead to death!

So only a few hours into the first day of filming and we already meet with a few technical issues. RED camera was being difficult. But this gave me enough time to get to know the film crew, the actors and Tasmania’s weather. I meet with the two main actors Kate (plays Carmen) and Finnah (plays Sam) who are both, very sweet girls. Both being very new to this type of experience, it was hard to believe no one saw my talented acting skills Once the RED finally woke up we started our first shot which was outside the house and it was very cold. No, it was freezing. Never have I felt coldness like this before, not even when I was battling polar bears in Antarctica.

The difficult thing about filming with RED for us, is that the video data kept switching to different storage mediums. The over sized hard drive and little ninja memory cards. Difference? Hard drive was a massive 500gb of room, compared to the memory cards of 8gb. So when it came to using memory cards, they often had to change the memory due to the size limit, which meant I had to run into the house, transfer data, then copy it twice, being super aware all the data was collected (I should have been called the Data Collector!!) and return and hand it back. Even though we had four 8gb memory cards, I still had to transfer once one was full.

When ever it came to our lunch break, regardless of the video/sound data already copied, I’d still make a full backup copy of everything just incase. It was a nervous process when it came to data transfers, so Adam wanted to make sure we had copies of copies. Lunchtime was also a good experience due to the interesting food that became available like potato salad, muffins, bread, some beef mix, pasta(change), Indian takeaway, and so on. There was actually a lot of stuff I had ever tried before and I must say it did tickle me belly with happiness….

……Aldrich’s on drugs again.

During the week of filming, around half way through the shoot a few of the film crew had gotten sick. Apparently the tap water had a leak that came from the sewer…i think. Luckily I restricted myself with only bottle water but others weren’t so lucky, and while their absence on the day was missed, we all pulled through and recycled everyone’s titled positions to fill in those blank spots.

What was interesting to see is the alterations the crew made to find a desired shot in a different angle. Instead of shooting the shot as it was, with all the objects and characters in their original position, they moved them around to make the shot work. This was surprisingly new to me and it was intriguing to see the various methods of creating the right shot. With that knowledge I feel my next epic movie will be so amazing, people will permanently in-print it in their very minds :O

I should also mention during the course of filming I actually became the audio guy, a mesmerizing experience that made me feel more then I should have. Basically I just held the boom Mic to capture the actors voice, it doesn’t sound like much but it actually was tiresome. It was the weight of the boom Mic, I didn’t realize it was quite heavy. Thankfully the master had told me an impossible method of holding a boom Mic in a special pose…amazingly it work and I felt no weight. And if your browse through Briony’s blog post you’ll be able to find a photo of me in action with the mic.

I became a photo guy during filming as well, my task was simple. Take photos. Basically i was entitled to take as many photos of either behind the scenes, or movie stills. This required a lot of fiddling due to the amount of other task i had to keep aware of. Taking photo’s of behind the scenes was simple, taking movie still was a bit trickier. Only because i needed to take the photo as close to the angle of the RED camera, since i couldn’t take photo during recording it only has to done during rehearsals. In the end i manage to take a decent amount of photo’s although they all lack on important thing…..me!

Soon enough, it was the final day. All of us were exhausted, and some what lost from our reality. But we all worked together slowly to finally reach the last shot of filming. Happiness was everywhere, tears was made and bodies were destroyed. Knowing it was the final day of shoot we were all excited to catch up on rest……but later during the night we all meet up for the rap up party which post-poned our rest. The night finished with most of us confused and very drunk…..well, maybe it was just me haha