Construction: Shoot#1

We have finally began our shooting!!

Since me and my partner were involved in a extra curricular activity involving making a music video of any available song in the market, we have had our reasonably fair share off shooting, editing etc before hand. We took part in this project so as to polish our film making and editing skills. Although throughout that projects we made countless mistakes in shooting, lost our entire data once, messed up the whole video 1 day before the submission because we didn't know how to use Adobe Premier,we managed to pull it off somehow. Even though we secured 1st position in the music video(ha ha!!!how did that happen?!?)we realized then and there being media students,Experience and Exposure  to media is very important. The rules of filming, taking shots, setting angles, adjusting lights, managing sounds , directing actors, placing Mis-en-scene and inspecting locations and finally Shooting are all those things that together make a film. Blindly going on to shoot a scene never produces the right results and going without proper knowledge of how to shot will result in the audience not understanding what we are showing. 

Thus We(me and my partner) decided to start of shooting those scenes which constituted of locations that were closer to our work area( the media lab!!).

We decided to start shooting  scene 5 to start of. Since the location for this scene was closer to our work place it was sensible to start of here. Also we wanted to have some feild experience before we went to different locations else where, so that we could deal with the few basic problems that we might encounter. Like something related to the camera, or tripod or sounds. We did encounter some problem with the lighting here. though the main light was the tungsten light the camera tweaked the light adjustment accordingly. Since Sir Waqas sat facing the window we did not have much problem in the lighting there. Howrever when we got to Hamzas part we faced some problem. Since his back was towards the window his face would automatically go very dark and the light behind him would go very bright. Thus i had to play with the aperture, the shutter speed and the ISO here. Though we managed to get desired result almost the difference could still be noticed if one looked very carefully. Though we did have time constraints as we were allowed to use the office of our school coordinated for a limited period of time only.

Although we wanted to shoot this 180 degree shot with both of our actors- the protagonist Ali Hamza Mahmood played by Hamza Khan and his Colleague played by Sir Waqas- we weren't able to do so. 
 

Hamza Khan as Ali Hamza Mahmood

Sir Waqas as the Colleague

Since both men had different jobs, getting them together at the same time had been tough. Although we did try this but unfortunately our main actor wasn't able to make it on time. Also due to lack of technological facilities(-we were only working with one camera, cut us some slack!!-)we had to first film a one sided conversation entirely with Sir Waqas and then with Hamza Khan. Both of us played the missing characters part whilst the other character was being shot(Whilst one of us would be busy in the acting the other one would be shooting). We had to do this also because unlike Hamza who was confident enough to act well enough once we directed him, Sir Waqas was not at all! 
Thus we had to shoot his dialogues more than 2-3 times until we got the right shot.
We also gave him quite a few motivational speeches to encourage him to act.

Now when i say experience and exposure, I mean it!
We practiced the 180 degree shots beforehand with a few friends to try out how we would do it in the final scene. Therefore when on the final location site we knew exactly how and where to set the tripod and a which height and angle, what were to be the setting of our camera etc. We took 2- 3 trail shots of each other to adjust the framing, composition, lighting and the leading room and headroom in each shots. Once all of our camera related things were set we begin the final shooting of the scene with our actors.

Trying out the 180 drgree shot before the actors got here

We had a problem in arranging for a collar mic and the one available in our work place was not being detected on the camera therefore we used two different alternative. Either we used the handy cam or the recording on the phone. For the scene with sir Waqas, we used the handy cam that we hid behind the monitor. The advantage of doing this was that the sound recorded was clear and easy to interpret. The disadvantage of doing this was that as the handy cam was placed very close to the subject, the creak of the chair, the clinking sound of Sir Waqas metallic strapped watch on the glass plated desk and external sounds were pitch perfect clear. In ha,zas part that we shot seperately as i mentioned before we used the mobile phone recording. This was a good alternative for us because these days every one carries phones with them so if they came in our shots we wouldn't have to conceal it or anything and being close to the person the voice would be recorded as well.since the mobile phone recording isnt so high in quality, we were able to gets hamzas voice

I also shoot part of scene 4 today. I shot the slight panning, zooming in and changing of depth of feild shot of Hamza. moving the camera at  an angle and tracking in simultaneously to focus on his signature. This shot required for a steady hand and I had to give it two three tries before.
 

Aiza 2 from Aiza Yasir on Vimeo.