First Shoot.....

Well, last night Tom, Oli and myself went to Muse Bar armed to the teeth with a HD camera, Sennheiser clip radio mic and Marantz flash audio recorder to........

a) test what the lights looked like when shot
b) test different exposures in the lights
c) test the audio
d) have some cheeky beers (a cocktail called an 'Old Fashioned' comes highly recommended)

the results were interesting and it is brilliant to look back at what works and what doesn't so when we do the real shoot everything can go to plan. Some plus points from the night were that an amazing amount of people really don't mind being recorded and are actually quite up for it. I also get to watch me performing magic for the first time, this is very interesting as i can see what is good and what need improving. Another GREAT plus from the evening is that after testing some exposures it looked like i'd have to turn the gain right the way up so that the film was quite grainy but you could see what was going on. It was either that or use a 1.6 iris and turn the gain off and compromise the lighting so that the audience might not see exactly what was going on. However ! today, with a little tweeking in Apple Colour i can add some light to the good quality footage making it look pretty good. I'll upload the footage tomorrow, i'm also in the process of making a trailer which should be up tomorrow or Monday. I used a clip mic for the audio and found out that it's really sensitive. I thought it would be the exact opposite so clipped it high on my collar, right in front of my throat. This made my voice sound so loud on the audio track i think i'm gonna have to move it down on my top and use a boom pole as well. I also need to pay attention to the camera when i'm doing it, on the footage i pay little or no attention to the camera what-so-ever, i don't wait for the camera i just race on which makes for zooms and camera movement that sort of looses the narrative of the trick. Next time i will be paying very close attention to it and as Tom suggested "treat it as a person watching the trick". Stupid that i didn't in the first place but that was the whole reason for the night. See what worked and improve what didn't. The night proved to be quite useful in terms of networking as well as i spoke to a few people who suggested locations who they thought would be really up for letting me film in there. I'm going to approach these places on Monday.

So, all in all, very good night. Enjoyable and valuable. Roll on the real shoot ! I must get my hair cut.......