Dust and Garrow's Law

Having finally completed the shooting of Dust and with the editing coming up soon, I think I should note down some points I have learnt from the experience. Also having been a supporting artist in set for BBC Period-coutroom drama, Garrow's Law, and having been carefully watching the set protocol, I have learnt some point from that too.

Dust
1) It's vital to have a fully committed and competant Producer. Phil was grand as a Producer - when he was available. But I think neither himself nor myself realised how much time commitment there is from the Producer. The Producer has to do more work than the Director in bringing it all together. The Producer has to be self-motivated. The Director has to be answerable to the Producer, not the other way round. The Producer must be setting timetables and deadlines and the Director must be trying to keep to them. The real energy and impetus for a production should come from the Producer. When - for whatever reason - the Producer is unavailable to provide the fuel for the project, the stress levels of the Director go through the roof. Stressed out with logistics, there is no way the Director can be properly creative in working with the actors to get the best performance.

2) It is vital, in any scene involving lights at all, to have a full run-through without the actors, preferably on a previous day. The DoP can try out various lighting setups and the technical issues can be explored without the same time constraints, and when the actual shoot takes place, the lighting design is as meticulously planned out as every other part of the scene.

3) It is much better for scenes where the lighting is used as an effect, to have 100% control over the light (i.e. to block out all natural light)

4) A set works much better with a 1st AD present.

5) You need a lot more set dressing material than you think. Otherwise you have a bare room with a couple of things in it.

6) Within the TPA department, there are certain reliable and certain unreliable students. It is good to know which are which.

7) I do not know enough good, local make-up artists. Everyone on my (rather short) list was working elsewhere when I approached them, except for a couple of Clydebank students who said they would do it and then never showed up on the day without so much as a text message to say where they were. I have been turned off Clydebank students in general by my experience with them.

8) Things work ten times better if everyone on the team trusts the others to do their jobs efficiently and without fuss.

9) We all have a huge amount to learn, especially in terms of lighting and sound recording.

10) Our class is woefully inadequate at Sound Recording. Only Graeme has an interest in the discipline, and most of the rest of us - either through fear or ignorance - will not even attempt being a Sound Recordist. So if Graeme is unavailable, I have to consider using TPA students, non-students and other options. We all could do with a bit more experience on the mixer. We are fine it it is working fine. But if something goes wrong, we have no idea how to fix it.

11) Exteriors and scenes without lights are vastly faster than lit interiors, though there is far less control of the image.

12) For a C-stand to function properly, it needs to have sandbags in readiness.

Garrow's Law
On the set we had 2 cameras and three boom mikes (plus radio mikes) and were getting through about 10 pages of script a day. I found this process of filming fascinating, as it was a drama, filmed on a multicamera studio system. Standard practice was to cover the scene from two angles in wide, mid and close up. We did long, long takes. If a mistake was made, we did not restart from the beginning, but from a pick up point, and thereby we bulldozed our way through it. Either this process was meticulously planned out beforehand, or the director had a lot of confidence.
Each set has a standard lighting design (mainly relying on kinos from the roof and diffused fresnels through windows), which then was tweaked with flags and reflector boards for each scene.
Carpet scraps were stuck to the soles of our feet to deaden sound. Takes were halted for pazzing aeroplanes whose engines I could hardly hear.
Smoke was used throughout the entire thing in every scene to define the beams of light and add atmosphere.
Despite some obvious tension between the DoP (a rather unpredicable irascible Bohemian continental) and the 1st AD (a rapid-fire efficient, enthusiastic, straight talking Londoner) the personality clash did not prevent them work working very well together. A couple of sparks would fly from time to time, but it was all kept very low key and you could tell they were both committed to the project and were just coming at it from different points of view.
Make-up and constume were called on for final checks just after the last rehearsal and before the first take.
Each department looks after their own continuity: cue endless photos.
There is a huge amount of dialogue and very limited number of sets in a standard TV episode.

Both cameras were using a particularly wonderful tripod, which included a 1m long tracking component, allowing for short camera movements without setting up a dolly. It also allowed for far greater flexibility and control when they did set up the dolly with the camera mounted on this second track on top of the tripod. I'm trying to find an example of it on the net, but its not too easy.