Over this week I was part of some shoots outside of my own personal projects, shoots where I had a lesser creative role and was simply helping someone else on set. I did a lot of this last year, especially during the music video assessment, and in my reflection on last year I came to the conclusion that I shouldn't offer my help to so many other people because then I don't have the time or energy to focus on my own work.
And yes, it has been quite hectic. Between the crazy amount of days shooting, class time and work I have found myself desperately seeking an hour here or there to catch up on my assignments, let alone work on my blogs. Shoots start early and go for long periods of time, work starts late and goes late. It's been really hard to fit anything in edgewise and my system has reflected the lack of rest with the adoption of some kind of virus.. Luckily I now have a chance to do some blogs and put some of my thoughts about these shoots and film sets in general into words.
The major fault that I have found with the lesser film sets - those that are less efficient and which end up being boring - is in how many people are on set and how many different roles are filled by different individuals. This was the problem that plagued the third year film from last year and I find it is here again this year, admittedly to a lesser extent.
The problem with the third year group project is that there are a lot of people and because of that there is a lot of waiting and doing nothing, with only the director and DOP being constantly busy. I've come to realize that student films work very differently from professional production and that our sets should not be treated as such. I understand why we're learning it the way we are, but if we're talking simply about our output and workflow a small crew fares much better.
I don't blame the third year group for how their set has gone, I think the presence of so many different roles is in the assignment brief, It does provide an interesting opportunity to reflect on that shoot and contrast it with some of the smaller shoots I've been a part of - the perfect recent example being the Film Noir group project, for which I did sound.
The difference between my role on the third year project (AC) and my role on the Group Noir project is that in one I felt useless half the time and in the other I continually flitted between roles of grip, gaff and sound. From my experience on both I can say that I enjoy the free-flow role much more. There are many times on the third year group project where everyone ends up waiting on one person at a time, because that person is specifically designated to that role and no one else is allowed to step out of their department and help - not that help is needed. To me it feels like we have a very big team, but that the workflow happens compartmentally, like a train - one person doing one thing at a time (even though there are 20 people on set).
This results in progress being made very slowly and the machine that we're trying to build isn't well oiled. A set is much more fun when everyone is busy all the time. The Group Noir project had this going for it, it was a much longer shoot that any of the third year ones (nigh on 11 hours), but it felt much faster because we were constantly busy and multitasking. The roles were not completely defined, because we didn't have the manpower to fill all of them, so we ended up flitting from one to the other. Another thing I really enjoyed about the music video sets (being sound one moment and gaff the next). I've come to the conclusion that for student films this is a more effective strategy. The sound guy doesn't have anything to do for long stretches of time, so why not double him up as grip or gaff as well?
The roles on a film set feel like they are running at different speeds, sound takes a lot less time than Gaffing or DOP-ing for example, and yet all are required for the entire shooting day.
There was a moment on the Group Noir set that really clicked for me, we were about to do the shots outside, and realizing that we didn't need all of us with the camera (there was no sound for example) we could simultaneously start packing up. Which in the big picture probably spared us half an hour or so at the end of the day. On the third year set I find myself waiting around as we collectively waste time. There are distinct examples in my mind where we could easily have gotten shots earlier or have gotten more shots in a shorter period of time on the third year shoot, the professional requirements of the set prevent that from happening and slowly everyone gets tired and lazy.
No comments:
Post a Comment