DIRECTIONS UNIT: Shooting 'Love Actually' - Issues and changes

Although I had thoroughly planned out my shoot, I still came across some slight issues on shoot day.

Issue 1: The Sound

I had booked out the Tascam Kit to use with my DSLR camera. However, my actress was unable to provide her own transport to my location so instead of picking up the sound equipment, I had to prioritise and pick up my actress instead. This meant that instead of using the Tascam Kit, I had to use a Rode Mic attached to the top of the DSLR. Although this was better than using the built in microphone on the DSLR, the sound quality was still not great. In future I will make sure picking up my equipment and my actors don't clash.

Issue 2: The Camera Angle

We set up the camera how I had planned, however, it looked slightly odd when the actors were acting out the scene. There was a large space on the right hand side of the screen where no action was occurring. Furthermore, when the actress turned her head in order to carry out the dialogue with the actor, her face was completely turned away from the camera. I decided to make the camera more central and also move it slightly higher up on the tripod. This ensured that the action was the main focus of the frame, both actors' faces could be seen and that the actors heads weren't getting slightly cut off when they moved around in the frame.

Issue 3: The movement of the actress to retrieve the DVD

Due to testing out the action and the shots before the day of the shoot, I knew that capturing this footage would be difficult to get right. I needed the actress to walk over to the DVD collection, pick one out and then hold it up and say a line of dialogue. Getting the shot for this was tricky as from one angle the actress would have her back to the camera, from another angle she would be blocking the actor and in another angle she would be speaking away from the camera and microphone.

The final image of these four images was the one I finally picked. I resolved the issue by making the other actor move slightly as she turned around with the disc in her hand. I also directed the actress slightly differently so that she turned further around - this meant she was not facing away from the camera.

Issue 4: Juliet running up behind Mark

The final part of the scene at Juliet's doorway involves Juliet running up behind Mark to give him a kiss / hug. I decided to film this from the angle facing the doorway so that we could see Juliet's approach. However, this made it look awkward and unnatural. I hadn't actually thought of filming it from the other direction which probably would have made the scene look more natural and give a better look than the idea I settled with. Instead, I decided to leave Juliet at the doorway and shout after Mark. Although the shout works better than the awkward run, it still didn't have the intended effect. Juliet doesn't sound as sympathetic towards him and Mark looks like he's just ignoring her instead of deciding to move on from her.

I managed to resolve most of these issues except from the sound issue. It is important to either use a boom pole or a tascam kit in order to record the sound as this captures much clearer, better quality dialogue. The sound captured by the Rode Mic in my piece is lower quality than I hoped for, meaning there is some noise / static and some echoes of the characters' dialogue. Using better sound equipment next time would improve this, therefore I will learn from this and make collecting sound equipment a priority in my scheduling.