Andrei Allen UCA Broadcast Media Blog

Following up from the research that i had done prior, i decided to take the route of filming a Photoscape rather than using the Ken burns effect to show pictures throughout the portrait.

Using various location throughout my house, i set up a Photoscape mood board to show various photos of Oli as a child growing up with his family, and also with his dad. 

Because i was unable to receive footage in time from Olis farther, i found some images online of Tony when he was younger training, so i printed them off onto 200g Laser Gloss paper and cut them out, so that i could include them amongst the montage of photos that i had of Oli and Tony already.

The way how i designed the Photoscape of Oli growing up with his mom brother and sister, i presented the photo's amongst a variety of other family photos that i had received from Karen (Oli's mom), making sure that the photos of Oli with his mom and siblings were placed atop of all the other pictures in the background, so that whilst i'm panning across the pictures, the audience can get a sense of the type of character Oli was as a child, seeing his history as they scour the screen filled with a montage of photographs.

When Oli talks about looking up to his dad, i created a Photoscape on my windowsill, laying at the pictures in an order that tells a story about the relationship Oli had with his dad, but also showing the history of Oli's dad by what Oli knew of him, then finishing up with a picture of Oli and his sister and father pulling a funny face.

For the picture with Oli and his siblings, i took that picture on my balcony, placing the pictures on the individual wood columns using blue tack. The reason i made this decision, was because one of the jogging scenes in the opening act of the portrait has Oli jogging with some green metal motorway poles in the background, so filming a panning shot along my balcony was an attempt for me to try and visually match the scenes together.

Having prepared using the golden hour app, i set out at half 4am in the morning to get to sheerness early to set up for golden hour, as the window of opportunity to film during this hour was 45 minutes:

On the way to sheerness i wanted to get some additional shots as i was driving over the bridge just before golden hour, especially with the sheerness signage in the shot to let the audience know where the story is taking place. 

Because the caravan site where Oli lives has animals on the site, such as: rabbits, ducks, moorehens across the lake plus heron, geese and Owls, and i wanted them to be in shot, to try and help me lure them out, the food that i brought along with me was:

Brown bread

The shot list that i’ve got for this shoot mainly comprises of establishing shots of the caravan site; getting in the animals on the site and various locations throughout the site, then Oli leaving his caravan during the golden hour and going for a jog. (Following the shortlist checklist that i created)

The food came in handy, attracting the seagulls and also the ducks, however, the rest of the animals unfortunately was not local during the shoot. 

Here’s the establishing shots of the Caravan site and also the sequence of Oli leaving his caravan to go for a jog, with the animals roaming outside of his caravan

Caravan site establishing shots

Caravan sequence establishing shot

To get the tracking shots of Oli jogging, we went to a few remote areas where cars don’t drive down and had him jogging along the pathways on those roads, with my friend Chris driving as i was filming Oli holding the camera stead from inside the car. The side shots of Oli jogging was filmed using my canon 24-105mm lens at F4 with an ND filter on it to stop down some of the light whilst maintaining the shallow DOF. The reason that i used the 24-105 was so that i could zoom in and out quickly to get the shot types that i needed throughout the shoot, as during golden hour we only had a small window of time to film in.

Oli Jogging side shots

To get the frontal view of Oli Jogging, i had to open up the boot and place the camera on the tripod inside of the boot, operating the camera from the back seat as Chris was driving. To achieve the shallow DOF i used my canon 70-200mm f4 at f4 zoomed in at 160mm with the ND filter attached to the front to stop down the light