Filming Log: "38: Urbanism in Motion" aka, what the hell is urbanism?

My sister the architect was not content with a seven year course and so she opted to do a Masters, and it seems to be a feature of post-grad study that they make you do things totally outwith your specialism. Luckily, Em and her group were asked to make a film.

Their brief was to document a strip of Glasgow's diverse urban landscape - specifically the route taken by their tutor's bus, the 38. It takes you through leafy, aflluent suburbs which don't look the slightest bit different from my arse-end-of-nowhere sort-of hometown, to leafy parks, industrial areas and business centres. What they're looking for (so far as I can understand, they have seven years on me here) is the changes between the areas and how you can tell.

So I was roped in for my technical expertise and what was surprising was that in talking to a room of architects, I realised that I do actually know more than I think about the mundane practicalities of making a film. I in turn roped in Julia, Lucy, Meg and Harry to help, since we were looking to use three cameras for most of the day. It worked out very nicely, actually, that we were able to shoot on the same day as half the class were doing the Spiers Lock event.

We were filming stealthily so we were kitted out with three A1s, very nice little cameras (I have one, I'm rather attached to it) and a box full of tapes. We split into three teams: team 1 at the front of the bus (me), team two near the back, looking out to the sides (Meg and Lucy) and team 3 roving around in a car getting external shots (Harry and Julia). We were accompanied by a couple of the architects since they knew the route and what shots they wanted.

It was an early start to catch the look of the dawn at the start of the journey, and then several hours off (which most people used to nap, fair enough) and then more filming, then more time off etc. This was to create an almost timelapse effect as we got closer to the city. Everything went very smoothly, the only slight irritant being that we sometimes had to wait ages for the right to come along (it had to be a 38 and it had to be a doubledecker) in the cold and the rain. No one on the bus challenged us (if you have a camera you look automatically official) and the girls looked after us very well (they even donated something to Chris's  birthday punch, which was a bonus).

All in all it was a very relaxed shoot, and nonetheless successful for that. I've done a rough cut already and I'm amazed at how easily it's come together. I'll have to attribute that success to everyone, so well done! It still needs more work, including a session with Adobe Aftereffects for a specific look they want, which I'm looking forward to since I've never been able to use the programme before. Also, maybe at last Chris will believe that I have a sister.