Risk Assesement

We have decided to post our up a risk assessment, answering the problems that we had and how we prepared for them before the shoot.


Our first area to asses was the location - the way we went about making sure that our location was use able was to call up Starbucks and ask permission in advance. This meant that if they denied us access then we could ask another coffee shop. Luckily they gave us permission and informed us on the lest busy day, this would hope fully allow us to get the seats that we needed to film. we also planed a back up seating location should our ideal seats become occupied. - On arrival to Starbucks (shoot day) our ideal seat were taken, we decide that we would wait for them to become free. this gave us time to set up our gear, talk to the staff about getting filmed, and discuss shot between group members. we then decided an hour and a coffee and a half each later that we would resort to our back up, we ended up finding that the backup seats offered nicer framing, allowing us to use the railings to frame the scenes. It also tied in quite nicely with the song title and lyrics due to there being a window and sill.


The second area was actors/actresses - we had learned from our mistakes last year and decided to come up with a set of substitutes, in the event that one actor or actress was unavailable, ill or otherwise preoccupied. We considered many candidates and the main issue that cropped up was getting a real couple, who looked comfortable together and wouldn't mind kissing when necessary. There was also another issue that we faced, being that we needed to find a couple that didn't look too young. Due to the time restrictions, the only couple that we could find in with that notice that fulfilled the previous requirements, was Connor and his girl friend Zarina Rogalla. They stepped into Mine and Ralph's shoes and kept the rolls and a majority of the shots from the rough cut the same (we still used Liam as the new guy).


Equipment failure - we are highly reliant on the equipment we are using mainly the camera. the worse thing that could happen whilst filming would be a camera error of some sort, for example: battery, memory, technical, damage, etc. We made sure to take all of these possible failures into consideration, one way we made sure that these errors wouldn't happen was by carrying a battery charger with us at all time and a spare fully charged battery. to deal with the memory issue, we carried a box of spare cards, this meant that if we ran out of room on one card we could replace it with a blank card. to cover us in the unlikely, but possible situation that something were to go wrong with the camera, i.e. accidental damage, or even if any of the above precautions were to fail we kept a plan b. this plan b was to take Liam's D90 (a back up camera that shoots film), although not as powerful it would still be a great asset in an emergency.


Camera man - we had to take into consider all possible errors. We also made sure that there would be a secondary camera man at all shoots; whether it were Liam, Cameron or Connor. this meant that we could have someone recording behind the scenes, or even have someone to talk to about technical issues and camera settings (aperture, shutter speed, ISO, lens choice). This proved to be a very good risk assessment as we had to activate our substitutes for actors and actresses, this meant that connor was unable to film a majority of the narrative; deploying one of our back up camera men to take over.


Weather - we had to take into consideration what the weather might be like on the day of the shoot. unfortunately the weather can never be definite; when we began filming for example the weather was nice, a clear day with sun and few clouds. however, whilst filming through the day the weather took a turn for the worse, as it began to rain. to try and help us avoid being caught of guard we checked the weather schedules, which stated that it was going to be a clear day, with the chance of it becoming overcast later. we deemed this to be good conditions, as the clouds would add a natural soft box, creating soft light for the shots. However, halfway through shooting the havens opened; this would have ruined our filing however, we took it in our stride making it work for us. Filming outside when it was nice weather and shooting inside Starbucks when the rain was too heavy. luckily we filmed most of the present shots in the dry and when it came to the memories we managed to shoot them out in the rain making them look like it was two different day.