All that practical jazz

In the past few weeks, I've done by far the most practical work I've done since our course started. On the third week back of term, we didn't have many classes, however on the Monday I was involved in a small two-camera shoot in the conference room. This featured a guest speaker who was giving a masterclass to TPA students. Our four man crew consisted of myself and Murray as camera operators, Amelie as camera assist and Sam as the boom operator. We also had 4th year Steven Ferguson to help us with sound.

So at 2 o'clock we set up all the kit in the room in preparation. Then at 4 o'clock the talk started. It was a good experience to be actually filming something real for once. Up till then we had had our fair share of technical classes with Ray, but never actually had a shot of operating the camera in a real situation.

Another big practical activity came on Thursday when the whole class was involved in filming the Bum Clocks gig. We were all assigned roles for this collaborative event with Kelsey, Meg and I the editors. So although I didn't have a particularly hands on role in the gig itself, it was still good to be there on the night helping prepare the kit with everyone else.

Last weekend, I also took out some of the kit to practice over the weekend. After three journeys up from Sam's car to the sixth floor of halls I was starting to regret taking as much stuff, and made a mental note not to specialise in roadieism. On the Saturday, Meg came up to get some practice with the kit. The only problem was, we didn't have any idea what to film. Obviously we could have just practiced setting up all the gear but it's always better when you've got some sort of project to work on. So after sitting about for a wee while wondering what we should film, Meg came up with an idea for a small story that we would be able to film without leaving halls. Obviously when you've only got two people and the fairly small rooms in Liberty House, it's quite awkward maneuvering big Kino lights and cameras and tripods and monitors around but we seemed to manage quite well. We also managed to get Flick down as well to help with the project which helped a lot. The basic story involves a man who is in his flat preparing for a romantic Valentine's Day dinner with his girlfriend. He places chocolates, a rose and a card on his bed then goes through to the kitchen to prepare dinner. Not long after, his girlfriend goes into his room and we see her eyes lighting up as she sees the chocolates. The man then returns to the room to find the box of chocolates empty and his girlfriend with chocolate smeared all over her mouth. So we filmed from about two o'clock to six o'clock without stopping and managed to get the whole story complete.

On Sunday, we managed to get the help of Sam and his car so decided to go on location. With the whole city of Glasgow and beyond as our oyster we weren't sure where we wanted to go. But we put faith in the fact that Sam always seems to know some cool place to go in the city. So we ended up at the old shipyards on the south side of the river. We came across an old derelict building with no roof and decided to film some sort of horror movie. We filmed for a few hours there until the rain came on and we had to leave. And when you film for hours and end up filming probably less than a minute of actual footage, it really makes you realise how much hard work it actually is and how much work must go into making a feature length movie.