Holly Probert DFSA Productions

Suzie's Dance film: Suzie's dance film was about her finding friends and finding confidence. she had a desire to film in silhouette which I have wanted to dabble in for a while. she contacted me, knowing how much I love to gaffer, sat me down and spoke to me about her idea. I really loved it and felt that I could be able to assist in bringing that to life. so I signed on as her gaffer for the shoot. I have already researched silhouette lighting so I didn't feel like I had to do that again, she spoke to me about some of her influences for the piece including 'Thought of you' by Ryan Woodward. as well as a couple of silhouette dances, all evident on her blog - suzannebellisio-dfsa.blogspot.com. when arriving on set, we had booked out the three lights, of which we only used two, as well as a gaffer kit. the gaffer kit came in really helpful as I had to remove two sets of barn doors from the lights before using them as they would've got in the way due to needi...

Edit: I looked through all the footage and honestly found it really difficult. I tried to edit some clips together as we tracked in different ways, some Sav decided to track her face, some her feet or torso. but it just looked uncomfortable and unnatural and just did work for me. so instead a choose one clip per dancer as when we were shooting we shot various continuous shots. when I looked at this it just felt more natural and like it was more appropriate. clearly if this were to ever be in an exhibition, I would have each video on its own screen instead of all on one but for the purposes of this presentation it makes more sense to have them laid out like this. the lighting between dancers was incredibly controlled and I have ollie and susie to thank for that because I love how the clips look together. and I love how the tracking looks, Sav really out did herself with this and did an incredible job. I couldn't have achieved such an impressive and aesthetically pleasing film th...

Final choices: People: after auditions/watching the audition tapes, i have finally decided on my contributors. for ages 10 i have chosen 11 year old Keira Ayling, trained in street and break dance with elements of tap, modern and contemporary. for age 14/15 i have chosen Mel Gilbert, age 17, trained in various styles but especially street and break dance. and finally for age 17-present i have chosen Laura Hardie, 17 years old, trained in contemporary, musical theatre and performance based movement. Location: i have decided that for both filming and rehearsing i will be at my home, (address on production pack) in farnham. my reasons for this being because my home will help portray a family environment reflecting my childhood, also it is easier than trying to book a studio. Costume: for Keira i have decided on leggings and a high neck, bright coloured top of some description, keeping her more covered and presenting a more age appropriate, child like appearance. for Mel, i have gone...

My role: On the studio shoot I took on the role of Gaffer. I worked under our cinematographer and I worked beside/within the camera team. As gaffer I worked alongside Chris in order to get to grips with the lights and he walked me through how to use the switch board and dimmer switches on the sky lights.  We didn’t have a lighting plan set in stone for the shoot. The director told me he wanted it flooded, but not too much that you couldn’t see the texture of the set. So I used two 4K lights as back lights. I used two of the sky lights to light from above, and used one huge powerful light, which I can’t currently think of the name for, to really flood out the rest of the set. As well as this we had a window on the left wall of the set. The director told me he wanted that lit, so chris and I used a huge piece of poly board, a clamp and a 1K light to achieve this. We positioned the board diagonally to the window, then we clamped the 1K light onto the top of the Left set wall and a...

shoot day 2: today i re-shot sav, as well as shooting tom, steve, ryan, owen, george.S and nommy, as well as asking Nommy to shoot me. we got loads done today that only thing i struggled with was recreating the same colouring live. so instead i lightly over exposed it and then i plan to edit in photoshop to achieve the same effects as i did in shoot one with all shoot two images. owen's chosen pose was very difficult to shoot. he decided to have his hand out, almost like he was going to give someone a manly hug, where you grab hands and then pull together. it was difficult to position in front of his hand which i found difficult. i showed my images to rosie and she loves the slightly yellow/golden lighting, with the silohette. i personally cant decide which ones i like best so i will probably decide during the edit. here are a couple of my images.

Shoot day one: today i did my first shoot and it went alot better than i thought because i had great help from savina and adelaide. today i shot savina, adelaide, millie, george.N and jared. this image of adelaide really stands out to me, the composition of the image is astetically pleasing to me, it shows her blurred face behind her hand which covers half her face keeping her unnamed yet still revealing some of her individuality unclearly. i love the drawn focus on her hand that i created, as it draws the attention exactly where i want it whilst still leaving more to see. however i also really like the silohette images of the hands because they are more obscure and leave the subject completely unnamed. they also look incredible as ive managed to manipulate the light sources to curve around the hand making it soft (via the use of two soft boxes), and gentle. that is the exact effect i wanted to create because the theme is around a caring and loving network of support, and so i want...

final plan: having now completed my paper work and having spoken to rosie alot about my plans and ideas i have decided to take three different sets of images. one silohette, one in front of the face and one with the hand out to one side. these all have different reasonings behind them which i will go into in the next post with the images. i want to take all 3 to see which ones work out best and how i feel they represent each person. my shoot starts tomorrow, hope it goes well!