Andrei Allen UCA Broadcast Media Blog

This was a selection of shots that i decided to created based off of the robbery situation that he mentioned in more details during the interview.

For this sequence, the location that i chosen coincidentally was the alleyway where Oli was robbed in when he was younger (something that i did not know!). Also we filmed at his caravan, with a sequence of him leaving his caravan at night time going for a walk.

This shot was mainly inspired by a similar shot that i watched on the Portrait documentary of Heather Hardy, where she leaves her home then goes for a walk down a street at nighttime.

To take this shot, i filmed at ISO 20,000, with my canon 24-105mm lens at F4 and the stabiliser on, using a variety of wide and close focal lengths to frame the shot. 

I used my steady cam to try and stabilise the footage, however though, looking back over the footage, it’s fairly wobbly, so in order to stabilise it further, i’m going to attempt to use the warp stabiliser plugging inside of premiere pro and see how that works out.

Here’s some stills from the production

Here’s behind the scene pictures

After finishing up filming at Minster Gym, getting the footage of the Photoscape, plus the sequences of Oli doing up his wraps and boots, i arranged with Oli to film some reflection sequences overlooking Sheerness at the Glenn park, which wouldn’t involve him doing any action / erratic movement.

Having being told about the location before hand, Oli mentioned that the Glen was one of the highest locations throughout Sheerness which people can freely access. Having read up about Golden hour prior, i thought that i’d get some reflection shots of Oli over looking Sheerness whilst the sun is at hits mid point before it goes down, as this would be used to finish the film on, as Oli reflects back over his life journey thus far.

So that i could figure out when Golden hour was, and how long we had to film during the hour, i used an app that i had downloaded called Exsate golden hour.

This app told me not only the how long golden hour lasts for, but also the direction that the sun is coming from at the exact geographical location where i'm situated. 

The equipment that i brought along with me to shoot with was:

Tripod - for a stable shot

Reflector - to act as a fill light for Oli’s face

24-105mm f4 - so that i had the option of zooming in, plus cropping in further with the crop mode feature

ND Filter - As it’s outside and bright, i brought the ND filter so i could stop down the light whilst using a shallow DOF on the close up shots

Rhode videomic pro - With the gain turned down, this was used to get the atmospheric background of the birds chirping and the wind breezing

Here’s the shots that i managed to get:

Having arranged with Oli’s trainer Ray a day for us to use the gym, i managed to gain access to the gym so that we could use it to film some sequences, plus so that i could film a Photoscape using archive pictures of Oli when he was an amateur boxer.

For my shoot day at minster Gym, it did not turn out too good, as during the shoot, as soon as we gotten to the action scenes, Oli’s injury that he had received a week prior had started to flare up on his elbow, causing his elbow to swell severely and stiffen up, so because of this, we were not able to achieve any of the planned action shots which was crucial to the begging of the portrait documentary, as the isolated scenes in the gym would of symbolically represented Oli before he joined Ray and started training. So due to this happening, it lessened the mood of Oli as he looked very upset and couldn’t move to much, and was thinking about the impact his injury could have on his up coming fight, so after i filmed the sequences of him doing up his wraps and boots, and staring at the camera - i wrapped up the shoot with him.

For this shoot, i brought along all of my lenses so that i had the option to choose the best lens for the shot as i had the time to. The lenses that i mainly ended up using was the 35mm t1.5 85mm t1.5 and also my 70-200f4 - varying between full frame mode and crop sensor mode, that gave me the option of further zooming in by an extra 1.5x of what the lens provides.

My camera settings that i used was Cine 4 Movie, as it performs well in low light situations, and i manually set my white balance to suit the environment of where i was shooting in.

When i arrived on location, i got there early and after the session had finished i decorated a part of the gym that i wanted to do a few sequences of oli sitting down staring into the camera and also doing his wraps and tying up his shoe laces.

After decorating the location, this was the result that i had achieved. Due to the lighting in the gym, there was a fluorescent light just above the boxing ring that was used as the fill light for the scene, that really lit the scene well.

Following the shot list that i had, here’s some stills of what i managed to film

Here's some behind the scenes of me at work

After i had finished with Oli, i continued to use the gym to take themed footage of his newspaper clippings and trophies of when he was an amateur, using various locations around the ring to show the pictures - following an example that i had researched about earlier from a documentary filmmaker production company tutorial.

To achieve the shots i mainly used my 85mm t1.5 lens to provide me the shallow DOF so that it solely focused on the specific items and the gym mes-en-scene.

I tried out a variety of shots such as panning, and tracking, plus static so that during the edit, i can see what shot suits the narrative better.

Here's some stills of what i achieved