Shooting B-roll at the Studio

Every Tuesday evening, Chris works on his carving with friends and students in his studio. This past week on Chris graciously invited us out to his studio to get some B-roll while he and his friends worked on their wood works. We drove out to Chris's studio in Brentwood Bay, and successfully got there without driving around in circles or knocking on the wrong peoples' door. Supposedly he often has quite a variety of people, including children who will come join him at his studio and work on improving their woodworking skills. Chris works on his own projects, but also helps to teach people carving skills and tricks of the trade. Chris is in the process of building a new studio space, and is currently only occupying part of his original studio, so there is not a whole lot of wriggle room for a large group of carvers. Luckily for us, only two of Chris' friends dropped by for carving night this week, so there was enough space for us to clamber around with the camera, and take over the studio to get our shots.

From what I've seen when we uploaded our B-roll on Thursday evening, we were able to get a quite a few good still shots and film clips of the studio, Chris' work space, his artworks, and of course a variety of clips and photos of Chris working away. Chris was working on a family carving dedicated to his mother. He showed us how he sets up his work, talking to us while he went; explaining how he continues to carve cedar, while having an anaphylactic allergy to cedar. He drew things on his wood while he worked to show us the ideas he has and to give us a clue of the process he uses while he carves.

It was interesting to go and see Chris while he worked on a side project. He is extremely humble and gracious and has been very pleasant to work with so far, which is very lucky for our group. Our B-roll is looking pretty good, hopefully we can get to the Pier Hotel in Sydney and get a few shots of his glass work there. If we are lucky, we may be able to check out some of the pieces in the hotel rooms (his art hangs in every room)!

I'm a little bit nervous for everything to come together. Thankfully our group works really well together, but it has been a little bit challenging to coordinate with Chris to get our footage! Now we just really need to get going on our interview so we can begin to edit. Hopefully we can get together with him this week and begin to record all of our footage, as well as begin editing!

Based on what we have so far, I think we will be able to create a really well composed film, as soon as we can get our act together! I am getting stressed with time constraints.. I've been reassured by my group mates that editing does not take as long as I'm anticipating. I hope they are right, but I really want this movie to be great, and I really don't want us to be rushed!

More and more this film is coming together, and it's beginning to take the shape of an actual film project instead of just discussion and proposals, which is so different from anything I've ever done in a class! I can't wait to begin editing (although I am nervous to actually try my go on iMovie)!!