For the next week I am being a runner on a short film which is significantly more professional then anything I have ever been involved with. While I have been on my own 'sets' before they have consisted of mostly skilled (and un skilled) friends with an extreme skeleton crew and myself falling into a number of the roles.
Anyway I thought I would document each day here, see if any others have advice and perhaps help give a small insight to other people at an earlier stage in their film making journey.
Day 1 (Friday) - Runner / sound logging
Firstly I got the role through going to a 3rd year film school (and masters etc) crewing night as encouraged by forum member jax_rox. As I currently live two hours from the major city, I signed up to shoots that were planning a more rural location, hopefully closer to me, so I ended up only signing up to 3 projects. Basically I walked up to them, introduced myself, said I was interested in healing out and explained my location situations and all that. Well only one director got back to me and that's the shoot I'm on now!
About a week ago I got basic times and locations but no call sheet until yesterday midday. The call sheet in itself was a learning opportunity! One or two abbreviations I didn't know (ie MOW: make own way) a quick search helped me a lot.
So I had to help a prop guy get his stuff so this meant leaving my house at 6am. Got to this insanely run down house but full of crazy props and expensive paintings and such, with an interedting and cool owner. We stacked up some stuff and headed to the location. We were about 15minutes earlier than anybody else. The cast and crew rocked up in four cars and a bus between 8.30 and 9ish. I introduced myself / the introduced themselves to me with about a third of the crew at first meeting, and slowly met more of the 25-30 over the rest of the morning. One awkward introduction consisted of
Dude: Brendan
Me: yes, er
Dude: *confused expression*
Me: oh are you Brendan? I'm Brendan too!
Basically the way he introduced himself I thought he already knew who I was.
First I helped set up the dressing room and food table and power and all that (on location) and then headed to the producer, I was then handed down to the first AD, next gaffer and then finally a grip who I helped reorganize the rental van with the lighting equipment and camera boxes. Enter first decent find out about a person chat with the grip.
When we got started filming I was given the role of filling out a sound log for each take and the time code and such. This is when I came as close to a Red as I have ever been as the filming day went on it turns out that 3 16GB cards are really really inconvenient when it comes to using a Red.
Because I was the runner I was also sent down the hill to the set up area numerous times to get random things or take them back.
Finally when I was nearing to leave I was asked to drop somebody off at a train station which was kind of the opposite direction to my house, so my journey home was just under 3 hours rather than just over 1 hour.
At the end of the day I would say they I know a out 4 of them to a good point, knowing the name of probably at least 85% of the crew too.
Tomorrow is the day off and I have a 15:00-23:00 shoot on Sunday.
Anyway I thought I would document each day here, see if any others have advice and perhaps help give a small insight to other people at an earlier stage in their film making journey.
Day 1 (Friday) - Runner / sound logging
Firstly I got the role through going to a 3rd year film school (and masters etc) crewing night as encouraged by forum member jax_rox. As I currently live two hours from the major city, I signed up to shoots that were planning a more rural location, hopefully closer to me, so I ended up only signing up to 3 projects. Basically I walked up to them, introduced myself, said I was interested in healing out and explained my location situations and all that. Well only one director got back to me and that's the shoot I'm on now!
About a week ago I got basic times and locations but no call sheet until yesterday midday. The call sheet in itself was a learning opportunity! One or two abbreviations I didn't know (ie MOW: make own way) a quick search helped me a lot.
So I had to help a prop guy get his stuff so this meant leaving my house at 6am. Got to this insanely run down house but full of crazy props and expensive paintings and such, with an interedting and cool owner. We stacked up some stuff and headed to the location. We were about 15minutes earlier than anybody else. The cast and crew rocked up in four cars and a bus between 8.30 and 9ish. I introduced myself / the introduced themselves to me with about a third of the crew at first meeting, and slowly met more of the 25-30 over the rest of the morning. One awkward introduction consisted of
Dude: Brendan
Me: yes, er
Dude: *confused expression*
Me: oh are you Brendan? I'm Brendan too!
Basically the way he introduced himself I thought he already knew who I was.
First I helped set up the dressing room and food table and power and all that (on location) and then headed to the producer, I was then handed down to the first AD, next gaffer and then finally a grip who I helped reorganize the rental van with the lighting equipment and camera boxes. Enter first decent find out about a person chat with the grip.
When we got started filming I was given the role of filling out a sound log for each take and the time code and such. This is when I came as close to a Red as I have ever been as the filming day went on it turns out that 3 16GB cards are really really inconvenient when it comes to using a Red.
Because I was the runner I was also sent down the hill to the set up area numerous times to get random things or take them back.
Finally when I was nearing to leave I was asked to drop somebody off at a train station which was kind of the opposite direction to my house, so my journey home was just under 3 hours rather than just over 1 hour.
At the end of the day I would say they I know a out 4 of them to a good point, knowing the name of probably at least 85% of the crew too.
Tomorrow is the day off and I have a 15:00-23:00 shoot on Sunday.
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