What happens on a shoot

If you’ve ever seen a behind-the-scenes feature about how Hollywood movies are made, you’ll know that the film companies use an immense amount of equipment for even the simplest of shots. Movie-making is such a time-consuming endeavour that a 10-hour day of shooting usually provides about 30 seconds of the final film. We’re pleased to say, however, that working with Pearldrop is a whole lot faster!

If we’re shooting on location with you, we’ll usually bring about enough equipment to fill a medium-sized car’s boot. We’ll need to set up several lights and microphones, as well as the camera itself. Usually, it takes about thirty minutes to prepare a room for an interview shoot. (You can probably keep working during the setup time). Once we’re ready for you, we’ll ask you to sit down and do a soundcheck for the camera (we’ll ask you some silly questions, to help you relax).

If you’re being interviewed, the interviewer will stand near the camera, but you can ignore the technology altogether and just talk to him or her directly. If you feel that you haven’t given a full enough answer to one of our questions, just let the interviewer know and you can do it again. This is your moment, and we want you to look as good as possible, so we’re happy to take the time to allow you to get it right.

Once we’ve shot the interview portion, we’ll usually get some shots of you doing whatever it is you do for your job. We’ll then shoot the building and any local environment, perhaps getting some images of your staff at work as well as customers coming and going. (In the trade, this is called B-Roll, with the interview being the A-Roll).

When everything is finished, we’ll pack our gear away. One of our lights takes about 15 minutes to cool down, so we may have to wait a few moments while this happens. We’ll endeavour to leave your premises just as we found them (although it might look a little chaotic during the actual shoot!).