Last term was the schools production of Hairspray. After months of rehearsals the cast took to the stage and it was honestly incredible and the songs are still driving me mad.
As a memento of the night Sophie Smart and I offered to film the performances to piece together some of the best bits. Naturally this was a lot of stress (however no where near as stressful, I'm sure, for the cast of production team) we filmed on two out of three nights, the first with one camera as a little test as to what the footage, sound etc would be like and on the second night we used four cameras to try and capture as much as possible. The first night was quite relaxed, as it was more of a test we didn't feel some much pressure. We had the camera set up on a full extended tripod, on top of a table in order for it to reach above the audiences stand and get a full view of the stage. The filming went fairly ok although after a certain amount of time the camera would stop filming so we had to be quick to notice and start it filming again. Our other issue was just before the interval the battery died and unfortunately I have no spares for my camera so we had to try to ensure we were able to film the last half on the second night.
The second night we had the same set up set up of an over-view camera as well as one on each of the two side stages and one, controlled by me, at the front doing close up shots. This was definitely the most stressful night although we were more prepared. We managed to borrow several charges along with spare batteries to switch over in the interval, we also had an abundance of spare SD cards to switch round. However we still had a few hitches. As i was sat at the front I couldn't get back to Sophie (and Niamh who volunteered to help Sophie check on the three cameras she had) as so had no idea which sections of the musical they were able to capture and which I could relax on. We also had a major problem with on of the side stage cameras which kept cutting out, only recording for five seconds at a time. This was a major issue as I hadn't been as focused on covering the performances on the side stage and so there wasn't a lot of footage from that area. Luckily during the interval we managed to find Mr Welch who helped fix the issue for us to record the second half.
Editing me and Sophie had to tag team as going through all the footage to pick the best bits was pretty laborious but hey. Here's the result and I hope you like it.
As a memento of the night Sophie Smart and I offered to film the performances to piece together some of the best bits. Naturally this was a lot of stress (however no where near as stressful, I'm sure, for the cast of production team) we filmed on two out of three nights, the first with one camera as a little test as to what the footage, sound etc would be like and on the second night we used four cameras to try and capture as much as possible. The first night was quite relaxed, as it was more of a test we didn't feel some much pressure. We had the camera set up on a full extended tripod, on top of a table in order for it to reach above the audiences stand and get a full view of the stage. The filming went fairly ok although after a certain amount of time the camera would stop filming so we had to be quick to notice and start it filming again. Our other issue was just before the interval the battery died and unfortunately I have no spares for my camera so we had to try to ensure we were able to film the last half on the second night.
The second night we had the same set up set up of an over-view camera as well as one on each of the two side stages and one, controlled by me, at the front doing close up shots. This was definitely the most stressful night although we were more prepared. We managed to borrow several charges along with spare batteries to switch over in the interval, we also had an abundance of spare SD cards to switch round. However we still had a few hitches. As i was sat at the front I couldn't get back to Sophie (and Niamh who volunteered to help Sophie check on the three cameras she had) as so had no idea which sections of the musical they were able to capture and which I could relax on. We also had a major problem with on of the side stage cameras which kept cutting out, only recording for five seconds at a time. This was a major issue as I hadn't been as focused on covering the performances on the side stage and so there wasn't a lot of footage from that area. Luckily during the interval we managed to find Mr Welch who helped fix the issue for us to record the second half.
Editing me and Sophie had to tag team as going through all the footage to pick the best bits was pretty laborious but hey. Here's the result and I hope you like it.
