Chatham Dockyard: Shooting on Location Experience

Our trip to the Chatham Dockyard allowed us the opportunity to practice and experience filming a documentary on location.

We were split into our usual groups for the documentary unit, although we were a crew member short, to move to different locations and try to get some footage and create a story without the use of interviews. Our area of shooting was both inside and outside the life-boat building. The area included several pieces of machinery plus an entire exhibit dedicated to the evolution of the both the life guard services and the life-boats.

One particular thing that helped us to create a story around this subject was a helpful timeline of events over the last century. The timeline showed specific dates of events in the evolution with pictures depicting different types of life boats, most of which were held in the shooting area. Our idea was to have the camera shooting the timeline and going along it to show it in its entirety. However, we would focus on certain parts of the timeline and then cutaway to a shot of the type of boat depicted in the picture shown.

I feel that we were successful with this idea as it allowed us to present the story of the evolution of the life boat. The shots of the boats were particularly successful thanks to some careful shot planning and some creative decisions. Some that stick to my mind are a focus shot on a flag and a shot which pulls away from a mannequin and presents the boat behind it at an angle. However, I don't think that our shots of the timeline are clear enough due to being positioned too far away from it.

My role for the day was monitoring the sound which proved quite difficult due to the loud background noises (as it is still a fully working dockyard). Some of these sounds work very well as atmospheric noise as it suits the scene, however, some were slightly overbearing so we decided that the use of the fur cover on the boom was necessary.

Problems we encountered that we need to keep in mind for our proper shoot is the fact that we need to make sure that we gain permission from anyone who would appear in the shot which needs to also be written down. Thankfully, we didn't have anyone else in shot and we managed to dodge a school trip that was taking place in the location after we had got the majority of our shots.