Shooting a ST Fan Movie Outdoors
On Saturday August 10th 2013 we started our first shooting outdoors. I knew I wouldn’t appear on the set myself today but I was curious to see the shooting anyway. As the shooting place is situated on the opposite site of the city from where I live it took me over one hour to arrive but thanks to prepared maps and mobile GPS I was able to find the whole group, already working hard.
Our Trill starship captain and the doctor were already rehearsing a scene after the shuttle landing, both cameramen were taking repeated shots and sometimes asked our actors to repeat the scene just to caption the whole scene and not to miss anything (including a head or hand part). Their work is obviously a meticulous one indeed.
Lighting was varying as well. During sunshine our Director Assistant was holding a large oval made from resplendent foil to serve as an improvised headlight. Later however clouds came and the reflector “stopped working”. Fortunately the sun returned from time to time and everybody grabbed their cameras, clapperboard or the reflector to shoot as fast as possible.
Sound issues had to be dealt with as well. We had a sound engineer with us who knew his job quite perfectly but we were shooting on a public road so that we could not prevent people from passing around or talking loudly. The worst problem for good sound was a group of people talking and laughing quite loudly in a near garden house. Our main photographer went to ask them in person to try remaining quiet for a while at least and fortunately they promised to oblige. Finally all shots on the spot were taken, often multiple times so that the post-production would have enough footage to choose from. It wasn’t easy for our clapperboard to remember so many numbers of scenes and tries either – excellent memory indeed!
Finally the director and the photographers were satisfied and although some work still remained to be done on Sunday we packed and went to our cars to have dinner. The nearby restaurant was full unfortunately so that we ended finally in town, but the meal was good and we stayed there for some time. It rained heavily during the trip home but I was nevertheless very pleased with my experience from shooting. Just a few months and it will be my turn as well.
See you in front of the camera and – live long and prosper!
Praotec trekkie