Our first remote shoot - Roman Rütten’s OPPO RENO3

This is Roman Rütten’s OPPO – shot with London’s 1stAveMachine with Moonlighting in March – and our first remote commercial shoot. VIEW HERE Shot on location in and around Cape Town in the heady days before social-distancing, with the clients and agency joining remotely from the UK and China.

As Roman told LBBOnline, “it was pretty intense. But we did tests before, and it actually worked really well. [The clients] were able to comment live while setting up and do set approvals over a phone camera. For sure I will remember this shoot. I am really happy it worked out and our client was so great about it and trustful”.

WE’VE BEEN RUNNING MORE TEST SHOOTS WITH REMOTE DIRECTOR & SYNC SOUND TO STREAMLINE COMMUNICATION CHANNELS

In last week’s test shoots, we invited around 150 producers from South Africa and from around the world (through GPN: Global Production Network) to observe over the course of 3 sessions. With our director joining remotely, we shot with sync sound, talent and full Covid-19 Health and Safety Protocols. We’ve also been joining several test shoots with our GPN partners around the world as well as benefitting from our partner Moonsport’s experience in running remote broadcast productions.

For us, the key points to ensure a successful remote shoot are:

Prep time is crucial.
Bandwidth is king
Communication is key with multiple communication channels open. There needs to be complete separation in comms between the “director & set” and “the director and clients” and the director needs to be able to have a private conversation with whomever he chooses.

What we are currently developing to further refine remote shooting:

We ran a test this week on an app that allows the remote director to be included in the set walkie-talkie system; we will take this on a location shoot next week

We’ll keep you posted.

For more info on shooting in South Africa, please contact Shayne Brookstein at shayne@moonlightingfilms.co.za

Read the LBBOnline article on Roman and other directors’experiences of shooting remotely here.