Lee Kemp

Billy on sound

Phil Wood on cameras. Sony HDW-790s with Canon HJ11 x 4.7 and Canon HJ22 x 7.6 lenses.

I was on a job today and here’s how it went in reverse order. I was kind of directing, but only in the sense of trying to steer interviews in the right direction. I’ve been in situations before where I’ve found myself as someone who knows a little bit about a lot of stuff and ends up doing six different jobs on any given shoot.

In this case we had someone from the agency (big London agency by the way, which bittersweet as we were incognito for our client) who was doing the interviewing and steering content and a rep of my own client who was mainly concerned with framing and the quality of the key. So I was able to narrow down my own role to some very small specifics.

Doing the pre-interview brief. Telling them what to expect and how it was going to work. Do this, don’t do that. If you think you’ve got it wrong relax, we’ll edit it out. If I think you’ve got it wrong I’m just gonna jump in and stop you. There’s no point wasting anyone’s time or HDCAM tape which isn’t cheap.

Then once the interviews started I was just watching the monitor and listening to the answers. Not in terms of making sure they hit the brief but just making sure they made sense. They answered the question and rolled the question into the answer and didn’t look at the sound guy for approval at the end of each question and paused at the beginning and at the end and all of the other stuff that makes the edit harder if you do it wrong.

The interviewees looked good, the client and everyone else down the chain seemed happy. Again, it was just a small job but it was to have it done well and leave with everyone pleased.

Arrival was under very tight security. The eventual client is a company that has people in the world that don’t like thatm so we went through all the insane security. Once inside the fortress I realised I didn’t have all the usual stuff to crack on with so I could just be a pair of hands lugging boxes and rigging lights and tidying up. It needed doing.

I had a green screen job that didn’t go as well as i’d hoped recently and looking back I realised it was the first time I’d done any green screen at all. Welcome to the twentieth century Kemp. I have two regular DPs that I work with and I took advice from both of them. Then I took more advice from the one that was actually available and got some quotes for HDCam setups. Eventually rented from Pro-Motion in London after another rental house spiked the price. Miles at pro-motion was very helpful so when the client came back a week or so later to request two more interviews to be filmed with exactly the same setup I was more than happy to throw the business Miles’ way. Great service counts and put and extra £1k+ pro-motion’s way in return for being a little bit helpful.

In your face ‘other rental house’.

We used the Sony HDW-790s so we could get the most out of the key. Or at least our client who’s doing the keying could get the most out of it quickly and easily. Apparently the HDCam makes it much much easier as it contains far more colour information. I looked up the 790 and the review I saw said it was 3:1:1 but I think it was an old review and I quickly got bored of looking.

Crew was Phil Wood as DP and Billy Bannister on sound. And me lugging boxes and being generally satisfied. If you ever get chance to drink or work with Bill Bannister, you ain’t going home early. That boy’s got some stories.

And I managed an hour’s writing on the train home.