Documentary - First week of shooting complete

We’ve now finished our first week of filming and have done what we’ll be filming in the UK (the intro, different travelling sequences and the interviews with the Holocaust survivors and David Glenwright). The filming has gone very well with only minor problems, delays cause of traffic, batteries dying while filming an interview etc, but we've been well prepared for all the problems we've met so far having 2 extra, fully charged batteries for each camera, extra batteries for all the lights and zoom, pluss extra memory cards in case the one's we've been using gets full. 

I'm so happy we did all the testing that we did beforehand of the shoot, both the interview set-ups with 3 cameras and the driving sequence in the car since it made us a lot more effective and prepared for the actual shoot.

Our set up with the three cameras are working well, making the filming a lot more effective since we don’t need to spend a lot of time getting extra coverage after the interview, just a couple of close ups here and the which can be done while the rest of the group is de-rigging. Although it makes the filming more effective there is a downside which is the fact that it makes it harder to light. We have therefore been using more of the lighting kit than I originally thought we would and will also be bringing an extra reflector when we're going to Germany. 

We’re now preparing for going to Berlin, leaving 3am in the morning tomorrow. We’ve finished the paperwork, (risk assessments, records on myuca, different clearances, tickets, car rental etc) and are more or less ready to go. Doing some last preparations and decisions on wthat we’re using so we which equipment to take with us since we’re quite limited when it comes to what we can take with us abroad. We’re going to take a maximum of 4 lenses with us for the 3 cameras we’re using and are also swapping some of the tripods and use lighter ones. The reflectors we're using are 5-in-1multi-disc reflectors (translucent, silver, gold, white (defuser) and black). They're small, compact and makes it easier for us to make use of all the light that we've got at the different locations where we'll be filming. When packing the sound kit we realised that the boom pole is too long to fit in the suitcase and we really need it for the VOX at the Memorial in Berlin since we can't use only clip mics there. After some thinking Gavin came up with a brilliant idea which is to use the stands for the LED lights instead. So that's what we'll do!