Building a Shoot

Last week I promised an edited video and I am here this week to sadly inform you that I am still working on reediting that video but I did go on another shoot with my adviser in the meantime. This shoot was different from my first shoot in that it wasn't on the set of a biopic but actually on the site of a Habitat for Humanity build.

This shoot was intended to gather footage for a promotional piece to be used internally by Simpson Strong-Tide as they showcased their commitment to building actual communities along with the structural integrity of their construction products. They had organized a build with Habitat for Humanity and hired Evan to come out and shoot the action as it happened. Nothing on this shoot was staged. While the Simpson Strong-Tide employees were tiling various roofs and putting up the walls to new houses in the neighborhood, Evan and the other independent cinematographers that were on the shoot had to be fluid in order to catch the shots that they wanted. There was one instance where Evan and I were setting up to take testimonials of the company's employees but one of the marketing officials at the company ran over to tell us that one of the walls was going up. Instantly, the focus became trying to get in a good spot to catch the wall as it went up. Here is a shot from my phone:

Unlike me, Evan and his associates shot most of these scenes at the build site in slow motion. They did this because it gives the editor the ability to either use the slow-mo shots or speed them up to normal speed in post. Furthermore, the slow motion makes every hammer swing more dramatic. The only downside is that when recording in slow-mo the cameras don't record sound. However, these b-roll shots are meant to be used as a backdrop for some of the testimonial's audio so the actual sound of the site is not that important. Just in case Evan and his associates recorded sounds of things like the shoveling of dirt so that the editor could loop them if that was necessary.

Evan, Josh, and Scot all spread out to film separate areas of the site in order to get enough b-roll to satisfy the client. Not only did they split up but they managed to use three different cameras that allowed them to get different kinds of shots.

Evan primarily used one of the larger cameras. Evan filmed all of the interviews with this camera on a tripod but when we went to go film the walls going up, he could easily disconnect the camera from the tripod and get wider angled shots of the whole process.

Josh caught a lot of aerial shots of the people fixing tiles to roofs and of the walls going up with a drone. Every now and then, I could hear the drone flying about as Evan and I were filming testimonials.

Scoton the other hand shot low to the ground. He used a go pro that he could easily mount in places like wheelbarrows for the majority of the shoot. Furthermore, he manned the secondary camera that was on par with the one Evan carried around.

When we weren't filming b-roll, Evan and I shot testimonials of the company's employees. I have to admit at this point that I had nothing to do with the actual camera but I did hold the boom over the subject's heads. It's hard to believe how close that boom swings around the interviewee's heads during the process. During the interviews, the marketing executive would ask all of the subject's questions and encourage them to use specific buzzwords in their responses. At the end of every interview, we would run back through the questions and have the subject's give us a shorter soundbite of their previous answer. This was done to give the editor more fodder for the post-production.

The thing that stuck out most about the shoot was that in the blistering, Arizona sun, we still had to use a reflector to make sure that the lighting on the subject's face wasn't too dramatic. Even on a shoot that continually moved without the presence of a camera, every shot was still manicured to look good on camera. I guess that's just the nature of the beast.