Unit 3: Introduction to professional practice in creative media production - A Christmas Carol

4th November 2019

On Monday 4th November we started filming The Christmas Carol. This is the year 2's big project and we all were given roles in this project. My job role on set was 3rd assistant director,before we began filming I did some research in my own time, to find out what the 3rd assistant director job entailed. My job on set was to work directly under 2nd assistant director however my main role was to direct actors and organize extras.

When we began at 10:00 AM, I first helped out getting all the costume ready for the actors and organizing each costume for the extras and the actors. When we began filming, as 3rd assistant director, my main job was to direct all the extras in the background of the scene. This was a difficult job because the actors needed to walk at a certain time and to a certain point so the background looked busy in some scenes. This meant I had to have good communication skills with the actors and I had to have signals for each of the extras so they knew when they were meant to walk out. Furthermore I had to have good directions for the extras because I needed to make the scene look realistic, so the audience will find it believable. Another role that I was on set was sound operator, this meant I was in charge of holding the boom mic and having it close enough to the actors that it picked up all the dialogue. Furthermore I had to make sure you couldn't hear any unfamiliar background noise, such as cars, aeroplane's and lawn mower's. 

When filming I understood how important communication skills are when doing a big project. This is because both cast and crew needed to communicate well with each other so everyone understood what was happening at what time. In the morning of filming the communication skills between everyone wasn't very good, this is because sometimes people were confused which scenes we were filming. However in the afternoon the the communication skills got a lot better and we began working as a team and it went smoother.

Next week when filming the Christmas Carol, I think the cast and crew will work better as a team and communicate better. This is because everybody now knows there roles on the crew and what they are doing meaning people will be able to understand what to do and do it efficiently so it is done quickly and smoothly. Furthermore next week I would like to be more involved with the camera work so I have more experience doing different jobs across the Christmas Carol project.

5th November 2019

The day after filming we came in to college and we were given the task to plan a behind the scenes documentary for The Christmas Carol. This is a small side task to carry out along the second years film of  The Christmas Carol. As a group we wanted to make the behind the scenes as interesting as possible, so we decided to do a mocumentary of The Christmas Carol. Our idea was we would film the behind the scenes but things 'go wrong' and the awkwardness will make the behind the scenes documentary humorous. We also have to plan when we will be filming the behind the scenes because I will be needed for the 3rd assistant director job.

11th November 2019

We began working at 10:00 AM, the big job before we start filming is getting all the props, set and costume ready. First we began getting all the costume ready for each of the actors. But first we needed to find out what the actors were wearing on the previous shoot. We did this because the week before we took continuity photos of each of the actors and actresses so we knew which costumes they were wearing each week. This helped the costume team find each costume for all the actors and actresses.

Once we found all the costume, I wanted to help the set and designing team so they had some extra help. We had to create/plan the set for Scrooge's work place, first we had to clear the out the room. We had to work as a team to empty the room because it was heavy so we had to lift it together. Me, Kai, Joe, James and Conryad all emptied the room. We then made the room so it looked like a Victorian workhouse. Furthermore we needed to add an extension lead so we could have good lighting in the room. Once it was the end of the day we had to move everything back into the room exactly where it was before.