Well a few weeks ago, my assistant cameraman and I met up at Homebush fountain to conduct a thorough scouting shoot 4 days prior to the scheduled shoot.
I had set myself a number of explicit goals for the scouting trip.
- Find out what time the fountain turns off
- Eyeball the direction of the setting sun and determine how to factor this into my composition
- Work out my camera angles and choices of lenses for the various shots I wanted to take (wide, mid, and close-ups)
- Experiment with various different depth of field ranges to determine which aperture I was going to shoot at on the day to get just the look I was after.
- Determine the position for my off camera flash key light and power settings.
So how did it go?
Mixed!
We got there and set up, and within 5 minutes there was a ranger on our backs telling us that we can’t shoot there without a film permit. I had already investigated shooting permits quite some time ago, and felt I didn’t need one, but it appears that things must have tightened up a bit since then.
The ranger let us continue our scouting shoot, but minus the strobe.
So we did achieve goal 1 – 4 above…. I got everything worked out except the strobe position (which I’ll do on the day).
Big lesson…. It pays to scout. I have re-scheduled this shoot until 3rd of May when I’m back from New York. The entire creative team are confirmed for this date now. However it would have been a disaster had we turned up to do the shoot without scouting and the rangers stopped us from shooting.
I am going to be submitting my film permit application and will make sure to have my approved permit with me when we turn up to shoot for real.
I’m off to New York on Sunday and plan to do a similar shoot with a New York team while I am there.
Here’s my mood board.
However the stylist that I am using is going for a leather and latex steampunk look…. More like this.
Should be cool… stay tuned… I’m doing the New York shoot on 27th Feb.
Brent