Day Zero
“I’m an ambassador for Lumix and took the GH5 with me to produce a short film for them. There was also a film competition with Wex Photographic in the UK with the theme ‘sustainability’. I was already booked to go there for a family holiday so it was a no brainer really."
“I think the main difficulty was that I wanted the film to be narrative driven and it took up until the last week of the 4 week trip to be able to do the interview and get the voiceover. So before then I was filming things that I thought I might use without really knowing if I was wasting time. For example, I wanted to get some early morning traffic going into the city which required leaving home at 5.30am without really knowing if the footage would be useful or not. The other issue is that Cape Town can also be dangerous, especially with cameras on show. So I shot everything mostly handheld and discretely. I had friends who had their drone up in the air and were robbed at gunpoint for their controller and iPad. Luckily the drone returned to home and they got that back, but that happened whilst I was there. Over the years I’ve also been robbed and know other friends who have had similar problems. So safety was always on my mind. This alone was such a hassle and meant I had to be a lot more organised in my approach to getting the shots I wanted. It was very much risk verses reward. I really wanted to visit the townships where the South African people would have been most affected. There is no way I’d go on my own to film and ran out of time to organise a guide.”
“I didn’t really have anything to reference from. I went into it without knowing how it would end up or come together. This was for a film competition and the rules for entries were to be under 4 minutes in length, so that was all I really had to go from. The main thing with this short film was having to rely on the narration to really push home the story. Where I couldn’t organise the interview until the end of my stay, it really threw things up in the air a bit. I had no idea how the interview and films narration would turn out so it was it wasn’t the usual documentary. Luckily it worked out in the end and I had gambled on the right shots early on to fit in with the narration. Ray, who I interviewed, was fantastic and I had plenty to work with.”
“I was a one man team so I tried to keep everything quick and simple. I even left my camera bag behind when shooting in the city just to avoid attention. I left the Ninja Inferno, gimbal and tripod behind and went back to basics. Safety was most important, so I would walk around thinking about the shots I wanted to get and then make a plan in my head before having the camera in my hand.”
“I used the Lumix GH5 with a combination of Lumix lenses - 12-35 / 35-100 / 12mm / 25mm summilux / 42.5 nocticron. For the audio and interview I used the Sennheiser AVX-ME2 wireless mic with the XLR unit attached to the GH5. Then for the drone I used the DJI Inspire with the X5 camera and 15mm lens.”
"The main inspiration for me on this film was simply that is was something new for me. Producing a short documentary style video is completely new to me."
“Based on the final result of the film I would say I enjoyed doing this project. I would have liked to have done more in terms of footage but I felt I was a bit restricted filming on my own in areas that were not so safe. I’d loved to have gone into the township areas to better show the effects of the water crisis. But I just didn’t have time or was able to organise a tour guide for a visit. I actually loved telling a story through film and this type of project. Creating something with meaning and purpose was a great. So in general I am happy looking back at the project but I felt I was taking a few risks which meant it was a bit difficult to relax at the time.”
