Mental Health Campaign

For Clarice Head’s project, as director she asked me take on the role of a first assistant director (first AD). I agreed to take on this role because; I have done it previously before on other people’s projects and it is also, something that I am very strong at. The film is about a campaign educating people about male mental health.

For the pre-production process I was not needed for any of the meetings as I was just needed for the filming day. During the pre-production process I was a bit concerned about this project because, the director at first decided to change her idea as she was not happy with it, this meant that I was worried that she would not have enough time to prepare, film and edit her project before the deadline. However, when the second idea was ready, the director told me about it and I was still happy to participate in it because, I also, needed a second role for my production course.

On the production day, I met up with the director at our University in the Havelock Road building and went to pick up the filming equipment from the kit room. We then, took the equipment to the lounge room and then, decided to take some of it to our location room in the ‘Lacuna Place’ across the road to our University. We had to make two trips because; the director and I struggled to take all of the equipment to our location room. Once all of the filming equipment was in our location room, the director and I decided to set up the filming equipment ready for the first filming scene, which was an interview with a student from the University.

On this production there was only the director and I because, one of the other crew members could not make it so we were on our own which, was a bit of a worry at first but we managed to work without many crew members together.

During the set up of the filming equipment the first critical incident happened when two pieces of the kino lighting fell off this was because, it happened when we were trying to attach the kino lighting to the stand and it just decided to fall off. There was another problem with the kino lighting because, it didn’t like the position it was at because, the secure of the kino lighting and the stand was not good so then, to solve the problem we decided to place the kino lighting the other way to when it was in the first place which then, we placed one of the pieces back into the kino lighting so then, the kino lighting was fixed.

Also, during the set up of the filming equipment the director asked me to take a seat in the red chair so then, she could position and sort out the camera angle ready for the interview. Once the interview was set up, the director asked me to go and pick up her interviewee so that was exactly what I did. After that, we got the interview set up with the interviewee.

When the interview was ready to go, I was in charge of being the sound operator, I was a bit rusty with taking on this role because, I had not been a sound operator in a while since I did my first year at University which was two years ago so I had to get the director to help me with it. Once the interview was rolling I got the hang of it after a while. The interview also, went really well and when the first interview was finished, the director and I decided to do some cut away scenes with the interviewee.

During the set up for one of the cut away scenes another critical incident happened when the white balance on the camera was showing blue on the camera screen, to solve the problem we set up the kino lighting to see if it made a difference but, it didn’t so then, the director and I had to try a different solution and move to another cut away scene. With this there was another problem due to the fact that we did not have enough crew members so the director and I decided that I would stay behind and look after the filming equipment so then, the filming equipment would be safe and it would not get stolen but, it meant that I had to miss the opportunity to help the director out with the filming because, I had to look after the filming equipment however, I was happy with that because, it meant that I could have a break and to keep an eye on the filming equipment as well.

After that, we took a break and then, set up for another interview with another student from the University that we had to do. For this time round I had to again be the sound operator but also, take on the role of being the camera operator. I had the easy job of pressing the record button on and off for the interview.

The second interview went really well however, we did not have time to film a cut away scene with the interviewee because, the director wanted to do it another day. Also, another critical incident happened when I had to stop the filming at one point because, both the camera and the sound batteries decided to run to one bar so then, we had to change the batteries. The interviewee also, came up with the idea to fix the problem where we could plug the zoom to the camera so then, it could record from there but then, we decided not to do it because, in the end the batteries lasted to the end of the interview and we also, had the sound coming from the camera as well so luckily we had two set’s of sound from the camera and from the zoom.

During this production, one of the improvements that should of been solved was to make sure that, we had checked all of the batteries for the camera and the sound before the filming happened because, if we had not of checked them then, we would not had known whether the batteries needed to be changed or not and that would have been a problem for the zoom if we did not check the batteries. Luckily, the batteries were fine in the end and we had spare ones that lasted us throughout the filming day.

Also, another improvement that should have been occurred was having some more crew members to help with this production because, despite having a small topic it meant that the director did not want to have many crew members however, the improvement would have been occurred if there were more crew members that could of helped to carry the filming equipment and then, the director and I would not have struggled with carrying it backwards and forwards and we would not have gotten tired as well.

During this production both the director and I took some photos so we could put them onto our blogs as well as onto our websites too. The interview and the production in the end went really well. I really enjoyed working on this production especially having the opportunity to undertake multiple roles, which I found interesting. Learning about mental health, how it affects men and how they solve it was a topic that was unfamiliar to me. Highlighting the problems and solutions on how individuals deal with mental health issues was absorbing, as I knew little about the subject before participating in this production.