As Live Production Unit - Mock Blocking Shoot

Today we did a shoot using my camera plan and my blocking sheet. We hired one of the lecture rooms and in the morning moved the sofas in there as well as taped out the catwalk so we could see the lay out similar to the set design. Once all the cameras and equipment was set up, I next gave everyone a copy of the blocking sheet and camera plan and we done 3 run throughs without recording anything as I wanted to make sure everyone had a rough idea what they were doing and it gave the people on the course who were stepping in for us a chance to get familiar with what I wanted from them. There was a script but it has not been fully developed yet so the stand in presenters were filling in the gaps as best as they could whilst the shoot was being recorded.

Once the run throughs were done and we all felt comfortable with what we were doing I decided to move onto a recorded run through. This went well but there were things to improve on like timings and framing of shots. We did a second recorded run through and this went much better so I decided to making the 3rd record the final one for the mock up. This went well although framing needs to be mastered by the camera crew so I have learnt to make some camera cards for the real thing so they can easily look down and see what shot they need to do next.

Overall the blocking worked really well and there was a lot of movement that everyone got to grips with and felt it all flowed well with the show we were aiming for. Although there was framing issues the actual blocking itself went really well and with practice I know the framing will get better. You can view the editing footage below: