Metropolis Work Experience

I started an internship at Metropolis on Friday 9th August and finished Friday 30th, the day before my birthday. I was able to get in contact with an employee in the production team through a family friend where i sent him my CV & examples of my work from first and second year and he was happy to meet me.

The experience was great, even though i worked for 3 weeks without pay. It took me roughly 1 hour 20 minutes to get there every morning. The environment was very friendly, creative and relaxing at the same time. A lot of music industry people walk through the studio doors which helps create a buzz around the place. I was able to learn about the craft of filming, directing, and the use of lighting from helping out setting studios to film in and watching the professionals in action.

During the quieter hours, i was assisting with editing, running for standard jobs such as delivering packages to Soho and other places. I was also researching the industry and asking film technique related questions to help better my understanding.


http://www.thisismetropolis.com/

I joined the production team to make up 4 of us. The day i started, a band called Arcane Roots were performing in the studio. They were recording a live studio music video that we were filming. I helped set up, move objects around, whilst observe the DP in action. There was another external cameraman, and an assistant cameraman who was on our team as well as the DP. The rooms were lit up with two kino lights, and they were using equipment such as shoulder rigs and the track and dolly. This was my first film experience of shooting a studio music video. The effects of the slow moving track and dolly produced completely organic shots. The mood was enhanced with the smoke machine that i was in charge of keeping on a consistent level.

Later on we put a giant industrial fan into the studio and attached silver tassels around the rim. We put a huge single source light behind the fan with each guitarist separately in front of the fan. This put the guitarist into a silhouette and after pumping up the smoke it looked really effective. These shots were filmed on 240 fps to be able to get an incredible hi-sped and slowed down footage.

Recording in Studio A

Arcane Roots

https://vimeo.com/72426772

I helped set up a room for an interview. We placed 3 dedo lights around the room to brighten up the interior, along with a kino light placed to the side of the person who was being interviewed. Two cameras were used, one directly in front of the interviewee and another further below from a slightly different angle.

Mark Ronson

We filmed an interview with Mark Ronson at his studio by Kings Cross, London. There were two cameras, one head height and the other waist height from a slightly different angle. We used a kino light positioned from a low angle almost completely side on of Mark. A medium side single source directional light was positioned a little over 90 degrees to Marks other side, pointing towards Marks shoulder. The coloured lighting was the ambient lighting of the room that added more character from the environment.

Miki Lmai & Incognito
https://vimeo.com/76413213

I had started reading and writing about lighting in film making because of my dissertation question, which was an investigation into lighting in filmmaking. So when the gaffer was setting up the shoot I wanted to see how he would set up. He told me he would be creating a soft ambient feel to the room, to help him create this, he had loads of equipment. T-stands, additional arms, scrims, flags, umbrellas, grids, soft boxes and more. All the cables were neatly hidden away and coiled easily for future use. In the end, only two lights were used. The kino light had a diffusion material to soften the intensity and the big single source light that was diffused by a scrim.

Further to Miki Lmai and incognitos performance together, Miki was also doing a duet. A Kino Light in the corner of the room, along with 1 soft box light with a large white card placed underneath reflected a much softer light source that was intended to light up Miki Lmai for when she was about to do a duet with a pianist. The Surrounding room was darkened out to focus the attention completely on the performance. A hand held camera and a camera on a track and dolly were used to film. 

We filmed partly in the studio as well for additional coverage shots for the music video. The light was more stylised with the use of one kino in the background of some of the shots in this location. The other kino was creating the ambient light along with some of the studio lights.