Monday 3rd October
Chris Packham’s Bio Blitz
On Monday 3rd October, Chris Packham attended the university to complete a bio blitz with some of the university’s students. The day consisted of several activities, which all involved discovering as many species as possible in one day. Activities included pond dipping, setting up camera traps, as well as searching for plants and fungi and a closing lecture from Chris at 4PM.
A media team was assembled to record as much of the day as possible in order to create a short 3-5 minute video, promoting and exhibiting what Chris had been up to, why the bio blitz was important, what was achieved, etc. Within this team was three camera ops, three location sound ops and two photographers. Below I have detailed my personal experiences of the day – what went on, what I learned and such like.
The media team split up into three crews, consisting of one camera op and one sound op and the photographers would float between activities. Each team would follow one group and the idea was to stay with them while they completed each activity, which would give us plenty of material to use for the video.
The first opportunity to start shooting came when my team followed a university tutor who was searching for plants and fungi, and the experience I gained was vastly different to that I have experienced before. Because we were out in the field, there was no sound, camera, action, clapper-board as there is with films. I had to be prepared at all times to start shooting whenever we found anything credible, which was slightly difficult. I was using the Sound Devices 633 and Sennheiser MKH416 to boom. At first, I was getting caught up in my xlr cable, I wasn’t sure when to start recording in case something important was shot and I was quite unorganized as this was my first time shooting in this way. As the day went on, I became more comfortable and organized, wrapping my xlr cable sensibly when walking through tall grass, staying as close to the leaders who were running the sessions as possible in order to record the dialogue as best I could. However, there was still a few times I would miss something due to the need to be quick with the equipment if I was organizing categories or naming channels on the Sound Devices.
After this, I followed a group inside who had been using the camera traps. The information from the traps were uploaded to a computer, where the results were studied. This was much easier to record as we were basically static in the room, I was stationary when booming. However, the room was very busy as it was the centre for the bio blitz, so people were walking in and out all the time, having loud conversations all around about what they had found throughout the day. This was also something completely different to my previous experiences, because when on set everyone must be as quite as possible, recording the dialogue as cleanly as possible, not having general conversations all around the room. This was interesting as I had to get as close as possible to the speaker and aim the boom to pick up as little background noise as possible also. I believe I managed to pick up some good audio during the day, but was mainly happy that I was able to experience this off-the-cuff, unorganized, flexible, haphazard, immediate way of shooting and recording live in the field.
To finish the day, Chris had a closing lecture at 4PM in the Minerva Building to talk about the day, why he had scheduled it, what he and other students had found, and to have a Q+A with the students. In order to record this, we attached a lav mic to Chris, whose transmitter was connected to another Sound Devices 633. During the lecture, Dan, Rob and myself were monitoring levels and ensuring the audio was being picked up effectively.
I was very glad to be involved with this event, as I gained much experience in Location Sound in a way that I had not before, and might have not otherwise. The main thing I learned was how unscripted and live the shoot was, meaning the film crew had to be prepared for anything at any time, which was both fun and stressful at the same time – especially at the beginning when I was all over the place! I would like to experience a similar role again, in order to further improve my practice when dealing with location sound in the field, not adhering to time schedules, scripts, and so forth. I have embedded the final video below.
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