Time and Tide

A New Idea

Fresh off the success of our last short film Jia, we wanted to go bigger and bolder for our next project together and use the momentum to film something different. Instead of filming here in Australia, we decided to film in China - to tell stories we wouldn’t be able to back here. Vee had always wanted to film back in his home town of Fujian and he began making plans on how to accomodate that. Looking back on recent family events, he also felt that there was an opportunity to reflect on the past and his fortunes of having a life overseas.

Timeline

Preparations

The Crew
For typical low-budget feature films, you could expect a minimum crew of 15 to help in every aspect of the production. However for Time and Tide we were a production crew of just 3. We originally toyed with the idea of just the two of us (Vee and Myself) going back to shoot but once realising the scope of what we planned to do, we knew that we had to bring a third person on board. Lin was a VCA documentary film student who had previously assisted me on a student short film and when I found out she was a Guangzhou native; one of the cities we were going to shoot in, I brought the idea of having her join us as a sound recordist to Vee who agreed.

Producer/ Director/ Actor - Vee Shi
Producer/ Cinematographer - Nicholson Ren
Sound Recordist - Yilin Xie

Budgets

Location Scouting and Planning
Since we wouldn’t be scouting

Visa Application
Applying for a China Visa meant booking flights and preparing to live in China before being allowed to. We had to provide documents with proof of accomodation, return plane tickets and an invitation letter from Vee’s parents to stay with them. We also provided an itinerary of potential places we could visit. Within 2 weeks of applying, we were approved for a tourist visa to visit.

Narrative Vs Documentary
From the start we knew that we wanted it to have a narrative aesthetic but the subject and story however would be flexible, adjusted accordingly to what our characters say and do within the scene. There was a base storyline we had going into the project but upon recording unexpected moments and discovering new information about our characters we had to adapt and re-shoot different scenes and endings for the film.
There was a mixture of Documentary and Narrative techniques used to film the movie. For scenes that were happening spontaneously, we’d prepare to record a scene without moving the camera for at least an hour to let the scene build gradually hoping that there would be something useable that we’d discover. There would be many takes where we’d run the camera for hours and not capture anything useful. But like shooting a documentary, we had to wait for opportunities to emerge and be on our toes for the right moment. At night I would review the footage to check if it was useable and in the mornings, Vee would listen through the footage for content and review if we needed pickups or if the story would change in any way because of what we recorded.
I would compare our approach to filming wildlife. For scenes that were not planned, in order to film an authentic experience I could not interfere or influence the scene but had to anticipate and react accordingly to give us options in the edit. Most of the time, as Vee would be in the scene we could not communicate or discuss how to capture the evolving scene so it would be up to me to film as required. As our subjects were non-actors we knew that some moments could not be repeated but we still needed to capture multiple angles to give us the option to cut around in the edit. I had to use my judgement on when I thought I could move the camera in these moments as I could not understand the language. For safety, I would only move the camera once the action has settled. Noise and action happening offscreen would add to the cinematic quality of the frame. We didn’t need to see everything as long as we could hear them.

Similar to how we approached our last film, we only used available lighting on location. There was no supplementary lighting units brought along - everything was filmed based on what the potential action was and where the practical and natural light sources are. As we decided on a documentary approach we didn’t want to be setting up lights and worrying about batteries or fixtures turning off during takes nor did we have any stands to do this anyways. As much as we could, we wanted to give all subjects the most natural stage possible. To further this approach, Lin and I would be monitoring the audio and frame in another room after setting it up and letting it roll. This would be the most common setup for scenes in the kitchen and around the house.

Movie References and images

Preparations

When choosing the gear for this project we had to consider things that we normally didn’t need to:
1. Renting locally or bring gear over
Renting equipment in China was roughly 50% cheaper but we didn’t have the luxury of testing and preparing the equipment beforehand. The rental houses we found were also in other provinces, which meant more time travelling to collect and drop off while also having a time restriction of when we had to return them. We also wouldn’t know if we had everything prepared until we got there. In the end, we decided to rent from Melbourne and bring it over with us so we were confident we had everything we needed with us. A few other items like the tripod, additional AA batteries and V-lock batteries were purchased on Taobao and sent to our accommodation. Taking out semi-professional equipment through customs and past the Chinese border was our next concern.

2. Border control - Batteries and Carnets
When researching about bringing camera equipment across borders the first thing most people will read about are Carnets. For more expensive equipment valued above $10 000 I would suggest seriously looking into this but for me I thought an FX3 with a couple consumer stills lenses could pass as a hobbyist tourist rather than a professional kit. Applying for a carnet would have meant paying a deposit and categorizing all the equipment we’re bringing out with serial numbers more than a month before leaving, but we didn’t even have everything confirmed before then. Leaving Australia wasn’t our concern, it was bringing it back that was. We had fears that the Chinese immigration would want to look at what was on hard-drives as we had multiple 10TB drives with us with professional recording equipment and to potentially confiscate it. But we passed through without an issue. To minimize concerns that we were bringing goods purchased overseas into Australia without paying tax, we brought along folders with our equipment rental agreements and receipts of proof of purchase within Australia. Thankfully these were not needed.

If it wasn’t the multiple lenses and on-board monitor that raised alarms it could have been the multiple audio TX/RX packs and a Zoom F8 that we had along with the amount of batteries we brought onto the plane. To decrease scrutiny, we opted to purchase v-lock batteries in China to power our Zoom F8 unit while separating the kit as much as we could between the 3 of us. But in our haste to separate audio units from our camera kit we left batteries inside our audio units which caused Chinese officials to search our luggage upon arrival. Leaving the country, they scrutinized every single battery we had as well.

3. Legal Audio Frequency Ranges
The Sennheiser EW100 units we brought along had to be within the legal frequency range in China. For us that meant renting Band B (626-668Mhz) units that were within the legal limit. A simple check on the Sennheiser International Frequency Advisor page would let you know which frequency is legal to use in your country and then pairing the right unit Band to that.

4. Data management
The table below shows the calculations I did to estimate how many and what hard-drives I needed to get for the production. As we didn’t know what style and how we were going to shoot there were a few assumptions I had to make. Of our 29 days in China, 3 were travelling days where we probably weren’t going to shoot as much and we would also have a couple of days off without filming to rest. This left us with 24 shoot days and within those shoot days I estimated shooting a total of 4 hours run time. On our previous narrative short film we shot about 2 hours of footage a day, I doubled that as an estimate for our documentary style. Audio data was also estimated at the highest rate with maximum 4-channels recording every time even though I knew we would only have that set-up a handful of times.
From the calculations I knew we wouldn’t shoot in 4K ProRes HQ; the typical codec of choice, as data storage costs alone would be too high. Forgetting to convert mb/s to MBps originally tripped us up, we were estimating 8 times more data than we anticipated but after realising our error, we realised 4K 25p was well within reason. We settled on 12TB harddrives for the production and in reality we shot a total of 8.12TB. For 34TB of data we estimated $1350 on hard-drives alone.
As a precaution, we had also subscribed to Baidu cloud servers and uploaded our footage online every night. When we got our footage safely back home we deleted everything on the cloud.

In order to film for a whole day without needing to offload, we brought 2 x 128GB SD cards and 2 x 80GB CFExpress A Cards. This gave us 3.7 hours of footage before needing to copy data and free up some space. Having more than an hour to record on 2 cards also meant that we could leave the camera rolling during set pieces and let the scene build gradually. This became one of the key shooting styles during intimate moments such as mealtimes and family discussions.

Every night while uploading footage to the cloud, we would catalogue everything we shot in a logbook. Below shows a sample of our FX3 footage, Audio and iPhone spreadsheets. Lin and I would review all the footage and audio clips at night while Vee would review them in the morning. It was important that we did this as we went along because we could check the quality of what we were shooting and make adjustments along the way. An example of this was originally wanting to keep a low profile by using only lapel mics but after a week of hearing clothes scratches in our audio and muffled voices we purchased a shotgun mic and boom pole for the remainder of the shoot.

The final card count was A092 with 1670 clips. In total there was 72 hours of footage captured in 29 days. With a final runtime of 1.5 hours this gave us a shooting ratio of 48:1.

During our equipment test, we had a few things to figure out.
1. Scratch Audio Transmission to camera
We needed to make sure we could transmit audio from the Zoom F8 to the camera. This was important as we didn’t know the actions of our subjects and how many we’d potentially have on screen. We anticipated them moving in and out of frame or being too far away that we couldn’t rely on the boom or shotgun to capture audio. Our set-up was to run a line out into a G3 Transmitter and have a receiver on the FX3. This was the best set-up for any external filming we did.
2. The iPhone 15 as a B-Camera
For places that we didn’t want to draw too much attention to ourselves filming, we decided to have the iPhone as a back-up. I shot some test footage before hand to see what kind of situations we could use it in and if we could match them in post. In most situations, the iPhone held up but it was noticeably noiser at night. We had to purchase a Variable ND specifically for the iphone and a small stand which we could use as a hi-hat for the FX3 as well. We filmed using the Blackmagic app which helped us adjust our phone settings to match the FX3. We filmed in Apple-log 4K ProRes HQ onto a 500GB Samsung T5 SSD.
3. Packing light
I wanted to make sure everything we needed for shooting could fit into 1 bag. We were not in controlled environments so I had to make sure we could move quickly and safely.
When travelling around, I opted to keep the set-up built to carry everywhere with a bag for just the lenses and other miscellaneous.

Blackmagic App
If we were to use the iPhone’s default camera app to shoot, we wouldn’t have finer controls such as false colour, focus assist or white balance settings to help us create the best image. Using the Blackmagic app, gives us a good base to start our iPhone images to help match our FX3.
Because it’s a phone, there are a few restrictions we have to consider. Firstly, I would stick to the fixed focal lengths that is given by default. Zooming in or out from these ranges instantly degrades the images. For the iPhone 15 we were stuck with 13mm, 24mm or 77mm, all with fixed apertures of around F1.6-2.8. The default response in the blackmagic app is to adjust the ISO or shutter to compensate for exposure. But with a VND, I could lock all the settings and adjust exposure with the VND instead.
The purpose of having the iPhone 15 was to have a cheaper alternative than a 2nd FX3 that gave us the flexibility of cutting around longer scenes. It was very helpful in some moments but you can feel the limitations in certain situations such as in tight spaces without the ability to quickly adjust your settings.

Locations

Filming Style

• The final shot

Post Production

• Timeline

• Overseas Sound Mix

• Test screening: 35 audience members. The questions and feedback/ review analysis

• Antenna Documentary Film Festival Rough Cut Lab - 25th Sep. Chris Boeckmann, Simon Price, Penny, Lane.