Never Film With Animals, Children or Me

Ok, so have to do a small film project. Only a minute. Just one minute.  Can't be that bad.

Oh god. The palpitations, planning and stress.

Hints for a would be documentary maker:

1. Don't arrive half an hour late, hot and flustered, having just wasted an hour trying (and failing) to do some very simple maths.
2. Make sure that your camera battery is fully charged, and doesn't flash red throughout the process of filming.
3. Make sure that you're actually recording the truly beautiful piece to camera that your highly eloquent subject has just so kindly given.
4. Make sure that your mike doesn't pick up every sound from the street below: a shop alarm going off; a car rumbling past; a small child mumbling to themselves. (And that it is also turned on and recording).
5. Make sure that, should you decide to set your camera to MF (because you don't really understand the equipment and don't know what will happen if it's on auto focus), you've taken along your reading glasses so that you can see whether or not the picture is correct. There's always the option of asking your subject to check for you. But it's never terribly professional.
6. Make sure that your subject isn't dramatically lit from sunlight on the left, leaving the right side of their face in near total darkness.
7. Make sure that you remain relatively calm and composed throughout the painful process. Don't start gabbling like a complete idiot. Then leave. Only to realise you've left half your equipment behind and have to return for it twenty minutes later.

Thanks, James. It was definitely a learning experience. And I'll probably be back to film it all again...

(But I said I'd get a nice shot of you.)