Rough Sleepers - the filming process.

The filming process for my individual project, a short documentary about the homeless, has proved to be an...interesting experience. The equipment I used was a Panasonic NV-GS250 video camera, pictured left, which is less ideal than a professional video camera such as the Sony Z1 but turned out to have advantages as it was small enough to not be as intimidating, it's not too bulky to carry around and is easily transportable. I will also be using this to film the last scene at a restaurant, which would not have been possible with a large professional camera and tripod as it would have taken up too much room.

I opted for transportability and so decided to use a Manfrotto 679B monopod, seen below, rather than a more conventional tripod that would have been much more bulky and less portable. Earlier in the term we learned about all the different types of ways of holding a camera, comparing the pros and cons of everything ranging from tripods to a contraption known as a fig-rig, invented by film maker Mike Figgis.
The monopod, while can be less stable than a conventional tripod, is much lighter, more portable and can do a variety of creative angles such as high birds-eye shots or, held upside down, low-angle shots while still having a degree of stability. Because I needed to film vox pops on the High Street as well as cutaways which meant I needed to walk up and down streets, I felt the monopod was the best option for my project.

The final piece of equipment I used was a VideoMic Directional Video Condenser Microphone, a professional grade shotgun microphone that can attach to the hot shoe on the top of the video camera so that you can film and record high-quality sound simultaneously. I also used a wind shield since almost all the filming took place outside.



I've definitely learned a lot about the process of filming through encountering first-hand probably every filming-related problem possible at least once during the process of this project, if not two or three times each! Some of the problems I encountered and had to work around were:

- No DV tape included in the equipment as I thought there would be. The first day intended for filming (of course) happened to be a bank holiday and there were no shops open in the whole of Bath that sold tapes. After frantically running over the whole of Bath trying to find a shop that sold tapes, I had to quickly change the schedule around and use the time we met with Brian (a rough sleeper that the piece is centred around, pictured above) that night to get him Chinese and talk to him about his story and his life, prepping him for the interview and finding out the specific things about him that I could use to make the interiew process quicker. We rescheduled to begin filming that Thursday.

- Although I had thought the battery for the video camera had been charged for an entire day after I had made sure that I had new DV tapes and had plugged in the charger to try to make sure everything would be ready to start filming, apparently the charger didn't work that time for some reason so as soon as I set up the camera on Thursday, the battery died. I had to think quickly yet again and since we had been planning on taking Brian to get some food afterward anyways, we decided to quickly go to Burger King and plug the charger in the wall there while we ate. This time I made absolutely sure it was charging and after eating as quickly as possible to make sure we would have enough time to film outside before it started getting dark, we went and found a bench in the empty Abbey courtyard and were able to film the entire interview while there was still enough battery left - crisis averted!

- Accidentally filming over footage. After interviewing Josh, who volunteers with the homeless, I had been looking over the footage to make sure that everything had been filmed and recorded correctly. Unfortunately, when I then started the next filming day, I had forgotten to fast-forward to the end of the footage on the tape, which meant that the entire interview had been taped over. I then had to reschedule the interview to do it again, when I had the next problem...

- The microphone! The second time I interviewed Josh, poor guy, I made sure that I was at the end of the footage on the tape, that the battery was charged and we figured out a way he could hold the microphone underneath the camera shot so it wouldn't be seen, yet still be recorded with high-quality sound. The only thing I didn't think of to do was to turn the flipping microphone ON. The entire second interview was filmed with no sound being recorded, which reduced Josh to a mime and was completely unusable, so I had to reschedule Josh's interview once again. This time, I finally got everything right and was able to use the filming.

- Filming permission. While I was able to get permission to film out on the streets of Bath from the Bath Film Office with no problem, the last scene that we wanted to film in a nice restaurant as a surprise for Brian proved more difficult. My first idea was to try Jamie's Italian, a Jamie Oliver restaurant which is one of the nicest in Bath. The reason this seemed like the perfect choice was because Jamie Oliver has previously done work with the homeless and so we thought the restaurant would be sympathetic to what we wanted to do. However, after days of being passed from one person to another regarding getting permission to film, they finally told us that apparently it would take weeks to get permission because of associating Jamie Oliver's high-profile name with any film. After debating what to do, I was able to contact a friend who is the manager of The Moon and Sixpence restaurant here in Bath who thought it was a great idea and said he would be willing to help in any way possible, giving us the permission to film in the restaurant. However, he said we could only do it when he was working, which wasn't until Friday night - the project was due on Wednesday. I spoke to Mike about it and was able to get an extension to be able to film this last scene, which is all there is left to do!

Now on to the editing...