Filming 20/04/2013

When it came to the day of filming, myself and Leon met at 09:30 to discuss the plan for the day over breakfast. I allowed him the opportunity to add to the shot lists and interview questions in this time.

Because Leon was more confident on camera, he took more of a role of cinematographer on the day, whilst I recorded the sound. I would have liked to have had the opportunity to use the camera, however, when I suggested switching roles, Leon was unsure of how to use any of the sound equipment.

When it came to filming, we initially gained footage for the opening sequence - which required a tracking shot through the corridor of the forum. As well as this, we shot all of the cut-aways within the studio. We needed to gain all of this footage first, as we were unable to interview anyone for the first couple of hours. Thankfully, we managed to source a previous tattooist at the studio, whom was happy to help. We shot a nice interview with him outside the studio.

When it came to interviewing the artists, we gained these from Tacho Franch, the owner of the studio, who became a large aspect of the filming for the piece. Caz was also a good contributor, and gave us some interesting answers within her interview.

We had a couple of problems throughout the day of filming, which I have bullet pointed below:

• We were unable to film as soon as we wanted because they had a guest artist in. However, we spent this time getting cut away footage and interviewing other members of the staff.
• Leon's camera broke mid way through filming. Thankfully, because we initially wanted a two camera set up (which could not be achieved because of lack of crew), I brought my own camera which we were able to use. However, because my memory card was only 8GB, and Leon's was unavailable as we believe this is what broke the camera.. we found ourselves constantly uploading footage to my laptop, in order to make room for more. This was very time consuming, yet there was nothing we could have done about it.
• I found that the XLR cable that connected the Marrantz 661 to the rifle mic was faulty. Although I checked this in store before filming (and having to change it 3 times, having one broken one after another), it tended to break up whenever I moved the boom pole. This was incredibly annoying and meant that I had to stand as still as possible to prevent any recordings from being ruined.
• The sound was a big issue for me throughout filming. When positioning a rifle mic on a boom, you must aim it at the persons chest, as this is the best place to record a clear piece of dialogue. However, a lot of the time, interviews with Tacho meant that he was tattooing at the same time. This meant that the mic was also aimed at the tattoo gun - making it incredibly hard for me to gain a good quality recording. If i were to film this again, I will have asked him to pretend to tattoo when answering questions. However, this would have lost its organic feel, and also wasted a lot of the two contributors time.

Overall, I am glad that we managed to film everything in one day. I think that we could have filmed more cutaway footage, and if possible, will have to go back and get this later in the week.

Me operating the boom pole and marantz

Leon gaining a high angle shot of the studio