DOPing 'On Tilt'

As part of the final year film module at UOL you are required to assist other films productions as well as your own. For this I 1st AC'd 'Fathers Day' (which has an article about it as well) and initially signed up to camera operate for 'On Tilt' as it had Aaron Bruce both as Director & DOP at the time. However, over the months leading up to production, this developed into me being DOP as we realised pre-production wouldn't start until we had already wrapped 'Off-Track' allowing me to focus on that and then move over to developing this.

The turnaround for this project was a lot quicker, only having about two weeks to plan shots before production would start so I was not able to undergo my usual process of meticulously planning so if you want to know more about how I like to plan shoots, check out the pre-production articles for 'Off-Track' as they go into a lot of detail about that.

Pre-Production

The entire film takes place in one single room over two scenes around a table, so to make the film more dynamic I suggested to the director separating the film into sections of shooting style, making sure that that the film had different feels depending on what is happening. A big element of this would be restricting use of shot types based on sections, an example of this would be using tighter lenses and OTS shots only towards the end of the film to make the scenes more claustrophobic. We would also be shooting at the aspect ratio of 2.35:1 to give enhance this trapped claustrophobia feel and looking for lots of movement past the frame by the actors to do this as well.

Another early decision that was made would be to shoot entirely on a gimbal to give more freedom to move between characters and save time on set ups as we would only have three days to shoot. It is worth noting that this film had more shots planned than 'Off-Track' with two days less, so being efficient was paramount, and using a gimbal would help with this. We would be using my DJI Ronin-SC as it has a focus wheel so we would be able to use prime lenses, and we would be using Aarons Sony FX30 to shoot on as it allowed for a higher dynamic range to the to Sony A7ii's otherwise available to us.

I had some test shoots to see if we could attach the Tilta wireless follow focus to the front of the camera and found that whilst I could mount it, it made the camera far too front heavy. However I did test the local wireless functions and discovered that the DJI follow focus could be controlled wirelessly from my phone when connected to the DJI app, this meant that I could have a 1st AC focus for me which wasn't the case when I used the Ronin-SC previously on 'Being Mum & Dad' where I did it all manually using the wheel on the Ronin.

The App isn't as easy to use and as accurate as having the FIZ unit but it does have a number in the centre which helps setting focus marks (above). I also rigged a Ninja to the handheld of my rig so that I had a larger monitor to look at swell as a wireless transmitter so that the AC's and Director could have a wireless monitor for themselves.

One issue I did find though is that the because the Samyang primes do not have a uniform size and weight like some sets, it meant that the longer lenses (like actually longer in size) were too front heavy for the Ronin-SC, this included the 35mm and the 135mm but not the 50mm & 85mm which are both the same smaller size. This meant that whilst using the Ronin we were restricted to those focal lengths which was actually fine by me as I planned on using them mostly anyway. For shots where we needed a wider lens we would have to use a tripod which did happen a couple times on the shoot.

I then created a shot list with feedback from Aaron over its development. If you would like more information on how I create my shotlists there is an entire article on it on my page.

Whilst this was happening we realised that despite the film sounding much simpler by mostly being around one table, it was quite difficult to mentally keep track of the blocking and camera movements. For this reason I then created some blocking plans using Shot Designer. These really helped visualise the scenes and keep us oriented.

I also spent a lot of time in preproduction learning how to play Texas Hold'em Poker which came in handy a lot when setting up shots and keeping an eye on continuity and the logic of the game/story within.

Lighting

We arrived a day before shooting to begin setting up. For me this would mostly be lighting as I did not have a gaffer for this shoot. When discussing how to light this scene with others, they all seemed to suggest having a large top light on a c-stand over the centre of the table, this makes sense as we are lighting six different faces and this would get them all especially if I used a china ball style diffusion. I used this type of lighting when I DOP'd 'Up On Wires' as you can see below and it worked for that but I didn't believe it would work for this.

Because the entire film was around the table, I wanted something with a bit more depth to it. I wanted to have everyone with a contextually valid reverse key. I also needed to be able to move around the table without seeing lights or stands and not having to constantly move lights between set ups as we didn't have the time.

Firstly I made sure we had plenty of practical light sources in the room, I requested as many lamps as possible from production designer Emily Strzebska , even supplying one of my own. And then we got RGB bulbs for every wall light in the room allowing me adjust the brightness and colour of them.

I then supplemented these lights with scorpions mounted to various elements on the ceiling (shown above). The entire shoot was lit pretty much with these scorpions I mounted around the room to give each character a key light that had depth to it, mostly being a reverse key for the three main characters which I then had a LED with a slightly yellow colour to it to act as an edge light coming from the bar, this was light and easy enough to move around depending on who needed it allowing for the flexibility we needed. You can see an example of this below.

The only disadvantage of lighting this way was that the output of the scorpions really isn't powerful enough to be a key light, but with the shallow DOF I wanted as well as the lower base ISO of the FX30, they worked perfectly.

I also was able to plug the lights in to the extension cables that the location already had up on the ceiling meaning we didn't need to change the batteries on the lights throughout the shoot, we also could turn them on and off through a light switch. This took some time to work out though as initially the lights wouldn't turn on when plugged into these sockets but after tracing the very messy wiring, we found the issue and how we had to wire it and were able to use the lights this way.

Production

Production of 'On Tilt' went pretty smoothly from a cinematography point of view, I'll discuss some of the obstacles faced to talk about how we overcame them but overall the set was a relaxed one with some really good people involved.

The first problem was that we didn't have a consistent 1st AC or 2nd AC. This meant that I actually had two 1st ACs depending on who was available, either Jake Jarnell or Brooke Austin . Both did a FANTASTIC job working with the shallow DOF, the new focusing system of my phone and all the camera movement, I thought we'd have more issues and takes due to these factors but they were great. We also had Floyd B. , who was the AD, fill in and do the clapper board at times.

Another issue was the Ronin itself, once rigged with a monitor, a wireless transmitter and all the batteries, it wasn't too heavy, but it was heavy enough that after long takes (of which we had many) my arms were burning... And I would be shooting like this for the entirety of all three days... Sometimes in very awkward positions as shown below.

There wasn't much I could do about this other than make sure I was getting breaks between shots, I screwed a baseplate to the bottom of the ronin instead of the mini tripod legs that come with it so that I could mount the ronin onto the tripod in breaks and it be secure, safe and not get knocked over during the breaks.

One problem that I have never experienced before when shooting is that one of the cast members wasn't there on the first day. When shooting a scene that takes place at one table, this is a huge problem. It just meant that I had to keep this in mind in my framing and make sure that it wasn't clear we were missing a person until we could get the shots with him in. Well the twist is that the actor never came, so on the second day we made adjustments to our planning to film the short with just the five actors, this actually allowed for some new compositions that you'll see as we could do two shots without leaving any of the players out.

The final issue was that I only had one battery for the Ronin-SC for three days of shooting. The battery did have 8 hours of life according to DJI but this wasn't ideal. For context, Ronin's batteries are the entire handle and are unique based on the model.

My initial solution was that I had ordered a spare battery, but it never came and I have since had to get a refund. My second solution was booking out the Ronin that the UOL Media Loans has, however despite the batteries looking very similar, they are ever so slightly different and do not fit. This was frustrating but led to the final solution which was what we went with for the shoot and it was simply managing the battery life as much as possible, so turning it off when I can, and every time I mounted the Ronin to the tripod between shooting, it would go on charge as I had set up the tripod next to an outlet. So the tripod rest station also acted as a charging station.

Conclusion

This shoot was a really fun one to be involved in and I am definitely lucky to have been able to shoot two final projects as DOP. Aaron Bruce did amazing as a first time director and I had two amazing AC's to help me through the days.

I am especially proud of my lighting solution for the day as I took a different approach by lighting the space and it worked perfect for the type of shoot this needed to be. Looking forward to seeing how this one comes out!

Thank you for reading,

~ Oliver

Crew Index

Writer / Director - Aaron Bruce

Producer - Emily Ann Gadd

DOP - Oliver Townsend ??♂?

1st AC - Brooke Austin & Jake Jarnell

Sound Mixer - Sophie Brown

Boom Operator - Emily Webb & Ross Goffe

Editor - Sean Bartram

Assistant Editor - Darren Wong

1st AD - Floyd B.

Production Design - Emily Strzebska

BTS - Mason Cummins & Caroline Calvert-Skinner