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My first role in this project was a camera operator alongside Renzo. I was really exited to do this role as I love camera operating and making the film look as nice as it can be. according to my research, a camera operator works alongside the assistant directors and directors and followed their orders on what shot they would want. I had to read through the script and figure out what cinematography type this film could be and prepare shot lists and equipment lists.

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This role was a whole new world that I had to explore because I had never even thought about doing this. I was location manager alongside Lola. According to my research, my role was to find the locations accordingly to the script. In this instance, we needed three different locations, an apartment, a community centre and a lake. My job was to find those locations by sending emails to places or by knowing people that would have the locations available.

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Here is one of the shot lists I worked on. I had to go through the scene in the script to figure out what shots the director had in mind and what we could make work with the camera.

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here is the finalised shot list that we came up with for the community centre scene with the assistant directors and the director. In this shot list there is shot for both cameras that we used, the blackmagic and the Red Comodo. the diffrent colours show what each camera does so that it was less confusing for everyone.

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I didn't know how hard a location managers job was until I had to experience it myself. The hardest location I had to find was the Lake location as it would be in a public space so there were quite a few procedures to follow. I also feel like I could have had more support from my coworker Lola because after I found all of our locations, I then had to fill in all the risk assesments myself, while also having to focus on some jobs I had to do in my other role. I feel like I challenged myself in the locations manager role as I had never done it before and I ended up enjoying it.

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One of my jobs as camera operator and locations manager was to create a floorpan for the lighting department so that we could all visualise where to place the lights and the camera. This specific location is the bottom floor of the house that we filmed at.

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For the cinematography style we ended up agreeing on doing something that could mix a surrealist Wes Anderson style with a lot of colours and still/quick moving shots with a more realistic style like some of Mattheu Kassovitz's work. We wanted the audience to feel attached to the camera but also have a forced beauty to the shot film as well

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The first and easiest location to find was the house/appartment. After looking around and asking people if they knew where I could look, I decided to ask my nana if she could kindly lend me her house for a day where we would be able to shoot all of our apartment scenes. Luckily she said yes and I was able to do a recce of it and then a risk assessment. This place was somewhat perfect because it is quite open so we had the space for cast crew and equipment.

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UTF-8Location Filming Risk Assessment Form SIGNED

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the next location that I had to find was the community centre. this proved to be a little bit harder as the director didn't want anything with loads of windows because we wouldn't have the time to cover them all. After extensive reaserch, I got the contact of the owner of Victoria community and youth centre on Facebook, and contacted him to see if I could come to an arrangement with him to use the community centre over a period of two days. After he agreed to it I went to do a recce of the rooms which I found perfect because there were not many windows and, looked like what was described in the script. I then got a signed location permit and did a risk assessment.

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The last and hardest location that I had to find was the lake. this proved quite a challenge because most public places as iv found out only give permission to big productions. I sent many emails to many different councils after eventually hearing back from Chesire East council about The Carrs Park in Winslow. I ended up phoning them so that I could have as much information as I could possibly have on how we would be able to film there. They requested some information about the shot film, a risk assessment and a public liability form, a form that I was very vaguely familiar with, so I went and found Georgiana so that she could send it to me. Vedad had already done a recce of it as it was a place that he really wanted. After sending those forms, I got a conformation email saying that we had authorisation to film there. I was quite proud of myself for having managed to do all that.

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The last thing I had to do in pre-production was ensure that everyone knew the exact filming locations and that all the shot lists were prepared for filming

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UTF-8Location Filming Risk Assessment Form Lake SIGNED

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the first day of filming was the apartment scene at my nanas house. As we were using only one camera, Renzo was quite dominant on the camera as I had a couple more things to sort out in terms of location paperwork because I was waiting on Lola to send me over a risk assessment that I had asked her to do so that I could get them signed, but unfortunately she didn't end up doing it so I had to do it in her place. I do regret sending them to be signed so late during the whole of the project and I know that next time I will be more organised in my paperwork. Once all of the paperwork was done, I was able to give a hand to Renzo on the camera and give opinions on some shots we were doing. This first day of filming went incredibly, we did have a couple problems with batteries running out at an incredible speed but we managed to get everything done in a good timing. The set was filled with good vibes with everyone doing something and everyone working as a team which I found really exiting and made me realise that this is definitely something that I do want to do.

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First day filming at the community centre !! As we had two days here, we could take a bit more time to set up the scene. The blacking out of the windows took in itself 3 hours to do, and as it was quite windy, we had some problems with the black curtains unsticking as they were only put up with some duck tape. when we finally started filming, we used a jib, which was really impressive as I had never had the opportunity to use one before and it was quite impressive how the camera is on one side and you can make really smooth shots with it. As the day went on we managed to get most of the shots in, sometimes using two cameras to be able to get two angles of the same shot at the same time. What I found interesting is finding ways to make the shot look good while hiding a second camera. I feel like day 2 was a success.

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Second and last day filming at the community centre !!! we had a bit of an obstacle that day because the day before we were told that we could only film until 4 o'clock, which made everyone a bit stressed because we were on a bit of a time crunch. The director decided that we were going to reshoot a couple scenes because he didn't think we had the time to black out the windows. For the shots with the jib that we had done the previous day we decided that it would be faster to use the gimbal instead which I liked because it let me film with a new piece of equipment that I had never filmed with. the gimbal took a couple shots to get used to but I think I got the hang of it in the end.

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this is me working with the director and the cast to make sure everyone is happy and comfortable in the shot, trying to see how I can do a focus pull by directing the actor about whereabouts to put the fishbowl.

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We then did a whole run through of the end of the script, where my job was to move the camera and focus on the person that is talking in the script. This was quite difficult because I had to be reactive to each person and manage to focus on them before they spoke. The solution to this was to have the actors wait for about three seconds between each line, and then the editing team would do their magic and make it look really smooth. I enjoyed challenging myself on new techniques and ways of filming. I feel like this second day at the community centre was eye opening on camera work because of how much I learnt.

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end of community centre day 1, unloading all the equipment at my house

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This was the best filming day because we had a lovely location and lovely weather to film at. it was also the most complicated because of the public around. we first had to do some insert shots of the main character walking to the destinations that were in the script, so we did that at the entry of the park, using the jib and the normal tripod.

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We then walked to the waterside, where nearly all the filming took place. to make the shots look nicer, we took some dandelions and someone would "shake" them to make all the pollen bits fly into the shot. we had to make sure that the equipment was not damaged by the sand, or didn't get too near to the water. a key challenge was to get most of it done before the sun moved too much. I liked this as it challenged us to work with a lot of natural light.

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We also used some "cheat" techniques to make the shot look nicer. one of my jobs was to hold some flowers up to the camera before it lifted with the jib. I found this really cool as it shows the "magic" of filmmaking.

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we had Jason in the water holding JC (the fish) on a stick with an invisible string so that when she drops the fish in the water we would not loose it and also so that we would not pollute the water in any way.

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the lake shoot was a lot of talking with the director, checking if he was happy with the shots done by me or Renzo and getting his thoughts on what he wanted to do.

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by the end of the shoot I felt like I had accomplished something. I was really proud of the work I had put into this project with the location scouting and the camera work that I had presented for this short film. there were obviously some bumps in the road but we all managed to get through them together as a team and I am really proud of what we accomplished as a film crew.

I also feel like I have learnt so much and this project has really made me open on what I would possibly like to do in the future. I can't wait to be able to try new jobs in the future.

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BBC Bitesize. (n.d.). Camera operator - Roles and responsibilities - GCSE Moving Image Arts (CCEA) Revision. [online]

ScreenSkills (n.d.). Locations manager in the film and TV drama industries. [online] ScreenSkills.

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Overall this project was so much fun but also I put in a lot of hard work to make this project perfect. I will confess it was hard at times to balance both locations and DOP but I feel I managed to do a good job at it. I couldn't have done it without sam and Jason as they were great at what they did.

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With locations, we tried to get peel park last Minuite as a backup because that's what the director wanted so I did a risk assessment for it, but we didn't end up using it.