Gunpowder Mill Film Shoot

Over the 29th and 30th January 2018 I was part of the crew for Katherine's Gunpowder Mill dance piece. My role was Assistant Director and Choreographer. Refer to previous posts to see my preparation ad pre-production work. Originally we were due to shoot across three days however due to weather restriction we were limited to just two days on location to shoot. Here is how each day ran:

Monday 29th -
I was picked up at 8am ready to get to location with the Director for the call time of 9am. We met the rest of the crew here but due to delays with traffic etc we all arrived 30 minutes late. We set up as quickly as we could - We had a gazebo to shelter us from the weather, tables to put equipment on and chairs to have a chance to sit down on breaks. Our first dancer was due to arrive at 10am however train delays caused him arrive an hour late. However once he was in costume we gave him time to warm up and we were ready to start filming ASAP. We were concentrating on all his shots before the other Dancer arrived at 12. We had more time to do this then planned as the other dancer also had issues with transport and again arrived late to set. We got him into costume ASAP and moved on from personal shots to partner shots of both the dancers. We didn't work very quickly today as it was very sporadic due to complications with the Dancers. This meant that Katherine our Director and Producer was away from set a lot trying to sort these various issue out having to call people about equipment and drive the dancers around. She left myself as AD to Direct while she was away but due to not having a official schedule to follow I had to think on my feet and myself and Sugini (DOP) had to choose the shots we thought were bets to film at the time and also make decision on her behalf on what we felt she wanted. This worked out okay but did leave us running behind as there wasn't enough crew to available on set to be able to work any quicker. Despite all these complications I feel we all still pulled together to move forward and we got as much done as was possible to us.

Tuesday 30th -
Katherine had a word with the Dancers about timings and also spoke to us as crew in preparation for today. She made sure that we would avoid all issue and complications that we learnt from because of yesterday and this would allow the function as a crew on set to flow a lot better. The call time was an hour earlier today and we were all on set for 8am. We set up and prepared ourselves for 9:30am and as soon as the Dancer arrived again we allowed him time to warm up an then we got straight on. Today we had a clear schedule to follow and we were all able to focus on our specific role as we had full crew here. Katherine was Directing the Dancers and the Camera Crew to fulfil the shots that the DOP had planned. The DOP was getting the camera team to capture these shot exactly as desired. I was explaining the Choreography  of each shot to the dancers and the crew so everyone knew what was happening in each shot. I also kept an eye on the choreography to make sure the dancers were doing there best, giving them feedback after each take and also keeping an eye on the continuity of this. Also as AD I was focusing on timings as this is what Kat had asked me to do. I was calling out how long they had left for each take depending on schedule etc and making notes on the script and the schedule for her. We then had runners here playing the music track for the dancers, watching the equipment and just generally helping in any way. Today ran so smoothly that we managed to get ahead of time allowing us to fulfil more shots at the end of the day that weren't on the schedule. This is good as Katherine had cut out a lot of shots the DOP planned due to the weather preventing us having our third day shoot, so we could add some of these back in and also capture any shots that people thought of on the day. Our main goal towards the end of today as we were loosing light was to make sure we had captured every part of the dance in the shots, which I had been marking on the script so that we knew what we were missing. We did manage to get all it filmed in the end and we were happy with this. It is a shame that not all planned shots could be captured but this location was outside and this along with the dancers availability seemed to be the biggest restrictions we had that caused this to be the case. However today we pulled together again and got a lot completed.

I feel like I fulfilled my role on set for this piece and tried to help as much as possible. It was a new experience for me to be part of filming a dance outside in a unique location like this but I did enjoy myself and learn a lot.