It was my first time of being on set since 2018. Not only that, but it was the biggest thing I have ever shot in my life (even bigger than anything I made when I was a student). So of course, going in I was a little apprehensive/ nervous. When we were setting up the first morning, my mind had definitely gone blank and I had no idea what to do first! After a few minutes of mild internal panic, it all came back to me and I was back in the swing of things in no time.
As I was shooting for rotoscope, the production was fairly streamlined in terms of what equipment we actually needed (basically just props and a camera), so each shot set up didn’t take loads of time- which eased my stress a little. We shot the majority in a makeshift studio space (an empty room above a shop), along with a couple of rooms in my house, my boyfriend’s car and the local park- there was a lot more space in the park, so I even filmed some of the supermarket scenes there (the below image will have a background of a supermarket aisle)!
Probably because of not having been on set for so long, I did thorough pre-production work, with extensive shot lists and a shooting order and lots of pre planning. My thinking was that if I do all this correctly, then even if I was a bit rusty on set, then at least we will manage to get everything we need, because it’s down on the paperwork! And if I follow the paperwork correctly, then that side of things should be in hand. And it was- I just wished we didn’t need to rush so much towards the end. Planning for a shoot should never be compromised- there’s always so much which can change or go wrong due to reasons out of your control, so it’s best to be as prepared as possible.
In addition to the above, I wanted to film at a high shutter speed, to eradicate motion blur in the footage. Personally, I feel this is frustrating to draw over as I prefer clean lines on my work, though some animators (and productions) emphasise the motion blurs of the hands for example. There is no right or wrong in this and both results are worthy, this just comes down to personal/ stylistic choice. I was able to do this for the majority of the shoot, though when we shot the footage on the second day at my house, the lights made flickering/ scanning lines on the footage- which I wouldn’t have been able to work with as I’m hoping to use EbSynth in the colour/ shading stage- as it uses the real video to help work its magic. So unfortunately, I had to shoot the indoor sections on a lower shutter speed, meaning those bits might be trickier to animate. In future shoots, I’ll use film lights indoors to be able to shoot at the shutter speed I’d like. I didn’t realise this would have been an issue going into the shoot- the flicker lines didn’t show up on the recce footage.
