Major Project: Dan Rowbottom Interview
For this shoot we drove up to Accrington near Manchester to interview racing driver Dan Rowbothom. He is someone Alex met before I came on board with this project and had already arranged to interview, as such he was not a contributor that I had much to do with as producer. With Alex arranging to meet with him and constructing the questions, I focussed my resources on overseeing this process and completing a schedule for the day. Ensuring first and foremost that we arrived at the location in plenty of time to allow for myself and Cailan to meet with Dan and asses the space we would be working with.
In an ideal world I would have liked to have arranged a location scout to asses this kind of thing which would have allowed us to come up with a more efficient lighting and camera plan. But with the location being a day's drive away from all of us, this simply wasn't possible.
As such on my call sheet I made sure we arrived early to understand the space we had available and adjust camera plans and filming accordingly. This was very beneficial as we arrived at the agreed time and were able to split the filming in to three sections in order to make it more manageable. As producer on set I made sure to have both physical and digital copies of our paperwork available which then meant we could easily alter them and ensure everyone was working from the same plans.
After meeting Dan, reviewing the location and asking members of staff if I could move certain items to make our filming more practical (which they agreed to) we could begin. My initial role was to run Alex and Dan through the questions so that they knew how the interview would run and had time to prepare. I was then able to assist Cailan (who was operating a camera on a Dolly) with his movements, advising him on where he could walk to get the most efficient shot whilst not injuring himself (as I planned in my risk assessment).
Since it was not practical for us to bring any other crew with, I did attempt to fill in by operating a second camera. But this was not something we had fully planned and since I am not as suited tot eh role as Cailan or Alex, we ultimately decided that for the majority of the shoot this was simply not worth the difficulty, and that I should focus more on ensuring the crew stuck to the plans we had played out.
This continued through to the latter part of the shoot, in which I did operate a second camera (since the environment was better suited for me to do this), but before doing so I made sure to ask staff to turn down their music, and establish that if anyone did not want to be filmed.
I attempted to follow the camera plans played out by Alex here, but I did not act on them as efficiently as I perhaps could have done, and there were times when I got in Cailan's way to some extent.
After this I ran the crew over the remaining items on our schedule and shotlist that still needed to be filmed. Alex and Cailan then set out to do this, whilst I remained in our "base room" to pack away the equipment. I would have liked to oversee the remainder of the filming but due to the limited space there was greater risk of my presence getting in the way.
Overall though, despite the difficulties we faced having not been able to previously scout the location. The shoot was highly successful and we got some great material. e a lot if this day was arranged by Alex before I joined the project I did feel somewhat limited as to what I could do here, and my desire to help was occasionally detrimental as I got in Cailan's way a few times. Hopefully this will improve going forward.
In an ideal world I would have liked to have arranged a location scout to asses this kind of thing which would have allowed us to come up with a more efficient lighting and camera plan. But with the location being a day's drive away from all of us, this simply wasn't possible.
As such on my call sheet I made sure we arrived early to understand the space we had available and adjust camera plans and filming accordingly. This was very beneficial as we arrived at the agreed time and were able to split the filming in to three sections in order to make it more manageable. As producer on set I made sure to have both physical and digital copies of our paperwork available which then meant we could easily alter them and ensure everyone was working from the same plans.
After meeting Dan, reviewing the location and asking members of staff if I could move certain items to make our filming more practical (which they agreed to) we could begin. My initial role was to run Alex and Dan through the questions so that they knew how the interview would run and had time to prepare. I was then able to assist Cailan (who was operating a camera on a Dolly) with his movements, advising him on where he could walk to get the most efficient shot whilst not injuring himself (as I planned in my risk assessment).
Since it was not practical for us to bring any other crew with, I did attempt to fill in by operating a second camera. But this was not something we had fully planned and since I am not as suited tot eh role as Cailan or Alex, we ultimately decided that for the majority of the shoot this was simply not worth the difficulty, and that I should focus more on ensuring the crew stuck to the plans we had played out.
This continued through to the latter part of the shoot, in which I did operate a second camera (since the environment was better suited for me to do this), but before doing so I made sure to ask staff to turn down their music, and establish that if anyone did not want to be filmed.
I attempted to follow the camera plans played out by Alex here, but I did not act on them as efficiently as I perhaps could have done, and there were times when I got in Cailan's way to some extent.
After this I ran the crew over the remaining items on our schedule and shotlist that still needed to be filmed. Alex and Cailan then set out to do this, whilst I remained in our "base room" to pack away the equipment. I would have liked to oversee the remainder of the filming but due to the limited space there was greater risk of my presence getting in the way.
Overall though, despite the difficulties we faced having not been able to previously scout the location. The shoot was highly successful and we got some great material. e a lot if this day was arranged by Alex before I joined the project I did feel somewhat limited as to what I could do here, and my desire to help was occasionally detrimental as I got in Cailan's way a few times. Hopefully this will improve going forward.
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