Importance of choosing a good location: What I have learned from season one of Crafting a Career in the Arts
1) Make sure there is enough natural light. If you don’t have lights, natural light is the best way to go. However, you have to be careful with it because it changes as the clouds move, the time of day, etc. When we shot in the Royal Alberta Museum, there was an enormous wall of windows with tones of natural light which was amazing, but the tradeoff for that space was the sound. It was such a large space that the speakers’ voices were somewhat lost and there was an overhead fan system which disrupted the footage as well. When we shot with Leela, the clouds changed the light constantly in her home. The best solution for the Royal Alberta Museum, would have been to put a damper on each side of Glen and use a lavolier. Unfortunately, we were allowed 1.5 hours to do everything!!! That includes get B-roll, do retakes, set up the equipment and pick a spot. To do things different with LeeLa, I would have closed the curtains and just used artificial light, but we didn’t bring enough lights with us.
2) Make sure there are no hidden sounds. This is huge and will make a MAJOR impact on your postproduction editing times and results. When we shot with Daelen’s Forge we didn’t realize there was a low frequency sound coming from a hot tub, which was on the other side of the wall. This sound created a constant buzz/hum throughout the whole interviewer! Sometimes it will would also kick in a bit louder as well. When we shout at the Royal Alberta Museum there were so many considerations regarding lighting, locating plugins and placing the subject no one noticed the fan running way up in the rafters but it made a big impact on the sound quality later and lead to a lot of extra editing.
3) Making sure to constantly check the camera settings etc when shooting in natural light. Because natural light changes continuously and throughout the day you will want to be sure to continually make sure your exposure settings are adjusted appropriately.
4) Make sure the background scene is interesting. Of course, it is not always possible to get an amazing location, but being creative with angles or the features of the space can make even a dull location look more visually appealing.
5) Trying to fit your camera gear in small spaces, to stay true to the subject. This is a major challenge when shooting interviews in the subject’s space. You will not only need to plan ahead to bring your most effective and compact gear but also leave extra time ahead of the shoot so you can rearrange the space to be camera ready. Some of our onsite shoots required us, with the participants’ permission of course, to almost completely empty the room we were shooting in as the space was so small we couldn’t fit anything else in at all!