Halloween Freakshow Assignment

Me and three other students were approached by freakshow performer Dominic Ricioppo with an offer to film him during one of his performances at the Krazyhouse in Liverpool, however he made it clear that only one of us would be able to accompany him. Dominic explained that one of us would be granted free access to the venue aswell as having our accomodation paid for (hostel). This immediatly caused problems as we were all very enthusiastic about the chance to film something so unusual, I had definitly never filmed anything even nearly like it so I was very keen to go.



Fortunately we managed to solve this issue when we realised that as one of us drove, we could ask Dominic if we could all go and simply share the roles around. Dominic agreed to this and allowed us all to go, this was helpful to me as we were using cameras that I wasn't familiar with having not used them before, so it was good that there was atleast one student coming along that could explain how to use it. After having a look at the cameras and learning how to operate them on manual settings, aswell as getting acclimatised to the hostel we would be staying in, we set off to the venue with Dominic and his stage partner, known as 'Lurch'.



Upon entering the venue I was immediatly worried about the amount space available to film (it being a crowded nightclub full of intoxicated people) and whether the drunk people around us would become an unavoidable distraction. After we'd had a good look around the nightclub for good locations to shoot from we went and had a meeting with Dominic to figure out our roles and positions, we all decided that the best places to shoot from would be right infront of the stage, for close-ups, in the middle of the crowd, to get the entire stage in all at once and finally one at the back of the crowd so as to capture a wide shot of the whole event. I put myself forward for the role of standing amongst the crowd and filming the entire stage, this was because I'd spotted a platform earlier in the centre of the dancefloor which I could use to get a higher angle and film above the crowd to get more of the stage in shot.

As I had never used these cameras before I found it very challenging during filming as I had to try and adjust the exposure almost constatly as the lights in the nightclub were constantly altering and making it difficult to maintain the correct level of exposure. Also challenging was the amount of drunk people who couldn't seem to keep their hands of the camera or stop asking me film them (usually by pulling the lens towards them), this was got very frustrating as it would usually happen during a major part of their act and would cost me a shot or two that could have been very useful. Overall though I thoroughly enjoyed the chance to film something so strange and unusual and I thought that although the exposure was off quite a lot of the time, the shoot went very well overall and we came away with some usable and very interesting footage. Now that I know how to operate the cameras on manual settings much better there shouldn't be an issue with solving exposure and focus problems when I come to use them next time, so the experience was valuable in that it taught me what not to do with these particular cameras.  



The final video, which Dominic wanted up on his website upon completion, can be found in this link: http://officialsboy.wix.com/johnny-strange#!gallery/c1ko9