Last Minute Heavy Pencil.

It was already dark, the night before the shoot, with the usual early start required, and I was still on a pencil. Don't you just love working in TV?

Around bedtime, I was still prepping my equipment when the assignment was confirmed. Still, no address for the first location, an un-named Liverpool FC player’s home.

At around 01:30 Monday morning, I had the address, so I checked Google Maps for an estimate of the time to get there, I had decided what equipment I would need, prepared it, and organised it for loading quickly into my car. Finally, it really was bedtime.

By 06:30, I was on the road with all my equipment. I had added 30 minutes to the Google estimated journey time. All went well until the Manchester motorways, which were even busier than normal. I might be a few minutes late, so phoned ahead and was told not to worry. We had to do some filming at 10, so we would have about 15 minutes to organise that. Not ideal but because of the thorough prep before bed it would be fine.

Journalist, Saber Desfarges, and Parisian Ibrahima Konaté, a Liverpool FC star defender, were cool and ready to roll. 

Radio mics were fitted and turned on. I had pre-set the camera the night before, so all that remained to do was, to turn it on, mount the receiver for the radio mics, and plug in my headphones for a quick audio check.

All was cool. By 10 am we were filming, exactly as scheduled. 

We filmed the first interview as Ibrahima was driving to his training session.

As we did not need any training footage, we went to Liverpool Football Club’s Anfield Stadium to shoot some B-roll art, and some vox pops.

Then we went to check out the function room, suggested by Saber's hotel staff as a possible location for the main interview. It was rather bland but fortunately, very quiet and fairly spacious, essentially fine.

Time for a spot of lunch and a chance to meet my colleague, Peter, who had brought 2 extra cameras from London. After lunch, he started setting up the equipment for the main interview.

Saber and I went off to film some of the people at The Anfield Wrap, a local podcast company, that specialises in discussing Liverpool FC. We filmed 3 of their subject experts making a podcast and then some informal answers to a few questions about Ibrahima.

Then back to the hotel to finalise the interview setup. Peter had done a great job in the limited time he had been there.

I adjusted the position of the chairs and set the lights. 

We had 3 different models of Sony cameras, an FS7 mk1, a mk2, and an FX3. So, one task was to make all their pictures look the same. Peter and I worked together to match them.

The format was to have, a medium close-up (MCU) and a closeup (CU) from the two FS7s, which I positioned side by side, pointed at Ibrahima from an angle of around 20 degrees to their eye-line, and a wide two-shot of Saber and Ibrahima, facing each other, filmed on the FX3 from 90 degrees.

Once we were all set, while we waited for our hero, I copied the earlier footage, onto a hard drive ready for Saber to take back to Paris, to save time at the end of the shoot.

Rather late, Ibrahima and some friends arrived. We seated the friends out of sight of Ibrahima, to avoid his eyes drifting about unnaturally.

My French is not quite good enough to follow the conversation but the energy and charm of the man came over very well, as had been the case in the car shoot.

With the interview over, Peter grabbed a shot of Ibrahima pretending to arrive, as I started copying the files.

It was a long day but very successful. There was never any stress. Everyone was delightful at all times.

I did not get much chance to use my survival level French but I love the language and any opportunity to parler français est toujours extrêmement bienvenu. 

Saber asked if I wanted a hotel room, as he knew I had already worked a long day after a short night and still faced a drive of more than 2 hours to get home. That was very much appreciated. We had a lovely supper in the hotel, and it was great to relax and chat in a more social way than is possible while working.

We got on very well, so Saber mentioned an idea to work together again, soon, perhaps on a Newcastle shoot.

It often pays to take time to socialise with clients. You never know where the conversation might lead. 

Howay the lads!