The 3rd Shoot - Abi

Our third shoot took place at the East Lancashire Fire station. We had been told that we would be given half an hour to film as they would be working and so could not afford to take too much time out of their day. We agreed on the time of 10:30 with the fire station and arranged to meet at 10:15 in order to set up cameras and not waste any time. Once we arrived, we had a brief meeting with the Firemen in which they asked us what kind of footage we wanted. We agreed on the Firetruck coming out of the station with the sirens on,and then the Firemen cutting off the door of a crashed car, which was already at the Fire station as it was used for training purposes. We also had to be prepared for the Firemen to get called out to a real fire at any time, however as it was a Sunday morning, we were told that would be unlikely. We then went across the road to set up the cameras and figure out the best position to place them for framing while the Firemen changed into uniform and started up the truck. We only had one chance to get this shot so we had to make sure we got it right. To do this, we set up two cameras either side of each other, one that I operated and one that Tom operated. We decided we should first shoot the fire engine coming out of the station. We went across the road and got ready to shoot, we started filming as soon as we saw the doors lifting, rather than when we saw the truck coming out, as we didn't want to miss anything. The firetruck went around the round about once, and we filmed it as it left and then stopped, as we didn't need or want a shot of it coming back into the station. Once they came back, we consulted with the Firefighters on what we could film next, and they had two wrecked cars that they said we could film them cutting the door off and getting the equipment out of the truck. We thought this could work as it could create an enigma code, getting the audience to wonder who was in the car, how it crashed and how hurt someone was or even if someone was killed. The firefighters first got the out of the truck and got the equipment out, which we filmed twice so we could chose between the best shot. We where then told it would take approximately ten minutes for the door to be cut off a car, and obviously this could be only done once, so we decided I should be on a camera on a tripod, focusing on the door and panning, and Tom could walk around the car with a camera filming different angles of the door and filming other aspects of the car like the broken glass. We filmed the cutting of the door which went very successfully, and we ensured that it was not visible that actually no one was in the car. I think this shoot in particular went very well as our hardest task was ensuring that we could film everything we wanted in the once chance that we got, which we succeeded in.