The first thing I did upon arriving at the Rhodes Drama department to film a rehersal of Die Bannelinge was to set up my camera and tripod. Carefully levelled and bubbled, I was set to go. And then the rehearsal started.
The actors flew around the stage at the speed of light, grabbing each other, leaping on tables, falling to the ground and spinning around. Having been drilled in all my practicals NEVER TO TILT THE CAMERA, I was stumped; in interviews, we had learned to carefully sit the interviewee in the shot, eyes placed perfectly on the cross point of the imaginary grid of thirds. But now, subjects shot in and out of my line of vision like loose cannons, and soon poor autofocus was fuzzing up trying to keep track of the expressive faces. Eventually, I improvised. With a worried look, I took the camera off the tripod and began to go freestyle. My brain overflowing with remembered advice: “Keep your knees bent, don’t ever zoom in, get close”, I inched towards my subject, who was lying down, humming loudly. As soon as I managed to bootleg a shot, she stopped. So I took a deep breath. “Zanne, please, if you don’t mind, could you do that again?” And she did! With my new found authority, I discovered how pleased people were to be on camera, and thus how accommodating they were to my requests. Cool. Click to view video
The positive thing about filming rehearsals is that the actors always repeat their actions, which allows you to predict their positioning and thus get good shots, as well as different angles and close-ups, which can be used to build up a sequence. Another pro is that drama people tend to be rather expressive and are not shy of making a fool of themselves. This led to great shots of the director crawling on the floor with her bum in the air, and the cast leaping up and down laughing, as well as attempting to push their protruding tongues back it not their mouths with their fingers. Click to view video
The main difficulty I had with the filming of this project was the amount of movement it required from the camera. There were many level variances in the drama department, ranging from the seats, the steps into the auditorium, the stage, and the platform of the stage, all of which I had to clamber over holding the camera, with interesting results. Click to view video
By the end of the filming, I had got many interesting shots, some of which sadly we had to edit out due to the length limits. I had a lot of material filmed, mainly because, as a result of all the climbing, I often forgot to turn off the camera as I was moving between shots. The action was unpredictable and made for great visuals, but this meant that at the end of the day we had a lot to edit out, and a lot of potential sequence shots which we just weren’t able to use.
Overall, the experience was great; I felt like a real pro, learned a lot from being shoved in at the deep end, and realised the great power that comes from brandishing a camera. I am TV3, hear me roar!