Running Around for Clients - Long, J.

The reality of filmmaking can only be really understood if you have actually done it, and to be fair there is a difference between student filmmaking, and the real deal. Achieving the real deal was the purpose of the taught module, and that cannot be achieved in some carefully designed classroom experiment. So, our lecturer was very clear about the problems that would likely happen, and when some of them did we learned first-hand the pressures and stresses of a real shoot. Surely there can be no substitute for real experience? One of the issues we faced was coming to terms with the elements in January and February. Our parkrun event location was Portsmouth Lakeside, and getting there for 7:30am in the morning (I kid you not!) was comparable to a particularly brisk winter day in the Arctic, or it felt like that anyway. Now, we had of course been lectured to about how unfavourable weather conditions can impact on a shoot, but many of us in our year (myself included) had not experienced these for real. I dont know what was more shocking, the cold, or runners turning up in just t-shirts and shorts, which quite frankly made me feel even colder! We made mistakes in our planning for the shoot, and we suffered the inevitable location shoot issues, but I suppose the key factor is, learn from the mistake, and never make them again!