— PRODUCER
Roxie Oliveira
— PRODUCTION COMPANY
The Centre for Creative Arts & Technologies (C-CATS)
— DATE
February 2022
“The year is 1972. Location – Moon. Commander Jack Jones wakes up from a Rover crash, with a broken leg and 30 minutes to reach his Moon lander. Will he make it? Or will he be the last man?”
In The Last Man, I acted as a DIT and AD in Guildford’s cutting-edge Virtual Production Studio. After a couple of test shoots during my Professional Training Year, I was invited back during my Final Year of University to act as a technical assistant for this project.
(Click the image below to be redirected to the film’s IMDb page)
Role Overview
Working on The Last Man, I crewed as an Assistant Director whilst shooting, and a Digital Imaging Technician during camera ‘down-time’. Subsequently, this meant a continuous workflow as I would be handed the Camera SSD to backup to the server as soon as we broke for lunch or a more complex scene change.
The Last Man was shot in Guildford’s Virtual Production Studio, which means completely changing the way you think about shooting. Whilst there are incredible benefits to working in front of a ‘digital set’, you also have to carefully consider how you’re going to shoot. We needed to avoid the reflections of tracking markers on the ceiling and we couldn’t set focus too close to the screen or Moiré patterns would emerge.
My project management skills were put to the test with this production, as I was required to work on spreadsheets, file management and shoot documentation whilst also doing my part on set.
Responsibilities
Joining the Last Man team, I had already worked on a number of productions as a Digital Imaging Technician. For the most part, this role's requirements have usually consisted of making sure the files are reliably transferred to an external storage device and then backed up to multiple locations – but I've always made the extra effort to rename the files with a uniform naming scheme. This can be a great help to the director and producer to review the rushes and to the editor for organising the linear editor project. Working as a DIT can be a stressful role as you oversee the stage of the production where the files can get corrupted.
As I was also working as Assistant Director for this production, the roles had overlapping tasks such as keeping a spreadsheet of: the shots, takes, and notes for both video and audio. Working across these two roles required me to work closely with all other crew members and allowed me to ensure that the shoot stayed well-documented and the files clearly organised.
Another part of my role as an Assistant Director required me to help organise takes on set. As an AD with technical knowledge, I could help organise and keep track of the technical aspects of the shoot and check that all the camera equipment was working as expected. I also stepped in on parts of the shoot that required a solution to be found. One example of this was helping the DoP figure out the ideal camera position for getting a reflection of the digital wall on the actor's visor; another was figuring out where certain (unwanted) reflections on the visor were coming from and finding solutions to eliminate them.