Today in my filmmaking class, we did a practice shoot. The scene was inside a photography studio and all the actor had to do was sit on a stool and say, “Hi, my name is Nick,” walk over to a spot marked on the floor, look past the camera and say, “And I’m here to tell you how it’s done.”
I got to be the Second Assistant Camera, which I volunteered for. My job was to swap out the lens in the camera and then I could sit down for the rest of the shoot. While we were waiting for the other camera volunteers to finish setting up the camera, Nick was holding a pair of scissors, opening and closing them while he sat on the stool. (This was not part of the impromptu script so another volunteer took the scissors away from him.) After he said his lines, he looked over to the volunteer director while the camera was still rolling and asked, “Was that good?”
Naturally, the whole time I was thinking about how this exercise could be improved. After the shoot, I approached Nick and told him, “Next time, you should throw a tantrum.”