Professional Practice: 'Fire Engine' Visit/Guildhall Museum

I went to meet Rachel at the staff building at the Guildhall Museum staff building at 9:20 am yesterday. This was an important day for the education officer, Jeremy as well as Rachel because as well as a short educational seminar, an antique fire engine dating from the 19th century was being specially brought into the museum entrance for the visiting children. As mentioned in my previous post, Ruby wasn't able to film on this day due to her previous commitments for the studio production.

There was also a professional cameraman that was present to take pictures of the unique event outside the guildhall museum. Unfortunately this meant I had to manoeuvre around him and the large number of children that were present without becoming a nuisance.

I was very surprised to see just how small the antique fire engine actually was, stretching out barely five 1/2 feet in length! A local fire engine team came along in their own modern fire truck for the kids to compare the difference and for the cinematographer to take their picture with the old fire engine.

I feel that I was able to get a lot of really good footage filming on the Canon, it's compact size and the lack of a tripod meant I could place it pretty much anywhere. The lighting was really nice as well despite the fact that it had been raining the night before.

I was also able to get some really nice shots of the children interacting with the firefighters. 

Later on at 10:30 am we went inside the Guildhall museum and I was able to film one of Jeremy's educational seminar's informing the schoolchildren on some of the different exhibits on display.

The children were enthralled with the museum pieces and I was able to get some great footage of their reactions. The biggest problem was that the camera was finding it hard at times to stay in focus but I was able to manoeuvre this as much as possible so it wasn't such a big concern.

Overall I feel the day's shooting was quite successful and we are shaping up to have quite a bit of useful footage for our film. What's more is that its made me feel more confident in my own skills as a cinematographer.