Filming in Liverpool - Monday Evening and Tuesday Daytime

On Monday evening (so after we dropped our stuff off at the hostel/hotels), we arranged to meet Michael in his studio to discuss the filming for the following day. This is to ensure that we were completely organised and he was prepared for the questions we will ask him. We told him our intentions. In the introduction, this consists of a brief history about Michael. We need to stress how Michael uses no electricity, he just uses manual tools when he is making and repairing his instruments. We also told him that it is imperative that we get him to talk about what he does and their current value, along with the value of some of the instruments he repairs, for example, his website tells a story of a Stradivarius violin he repaired last year worth £10 million.

We also wish to provide a context about Stradivarius, for members of the audience who are unaware of the legacy and why his violins are worth so much. As well as the legacy of Stradivari, we wish to find out about Michael's legacy through his latest project. Does he wish to leave a legacy of himself? Or to keep the passion of playing and making a violin alive for hundreds more years?

When we visited him on Monday afternoon/evening we discovered that Michael has a passion for Liverpool itself, not just the violin making. Michael actually lives in Wales and travels to and from Wales everyday just to be in his workspace in the centre of Liverpool, in the beautiful building, Bluecoat.We intended to capture an interview with him on Tuesday explaining why he loves Liverpool so much. Michael had many fascinating facts about Liverpool's history explaining that it was the home of immigration and that it is home to some of the most creative industries, much like Bluecoat.

Upon meeting Michael, we realised he was most natural when we didn't prepare him with the questions in advance. On Monday afternoon, we shot a couple of interviews with him, in which we just recorded our conversations and he really is such an interesting character that we did not have to ask loads of questions. He had so many brilliant, funny and heart warming stories in relation to his many years of violin making and we couldn't wait to get on with Tuesday's filming.

On Tuesday, we arrived at Bluecoat at half nine to sort our schedule out and make sure we all knew what we were doing. James missed out on this, as he arrived quite late into the day of filming saying the people in his room kept him up really late. We discussed all of our ideas (me and Chris mostly discussing ideas with the camerawork and interview set-ups) and awaited Michael's arrival at ten.

We filmed for ten hours straight on Tuesday, only stopping for the occasional tea and biscuit break (think we ate all of Michael's stash!). It did not feel like ten hours. Only when we had to resort to filming the candlelit scenes, did we realise how late it had become. We had thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, listening to Michael's tales and passion on his latest project. We now know the 52 stages of how to make a violin. Our filming went very smoothly. Chris did the majority of the filming with the Canon XF100 and I took on the Nikon D3100. Chris did more wide establishing shots of Michael working, whereas I focussed on the more arty extreme close-ups of certain items in Michael's workspace. A particular one that sticks in my mind is a pair of Michael's glasses hanging from a lamp along with a necklace with Jesus on a cross on it. I made sure I got plenty of different shots of this because it is a part of the man himself and shows an aspect to his character. Along with this shot, I got many shots of the violins he hung from the ceiling, which sometimes swayed from side to side if the door was left open. Another shot that I think worked really well is when we recorded Michael playing classical guitar. Not only does it sound beautiful but I decided to play with the zoom on the Canon XF100 and zoom really slowly until it stops on his fingers playing, and you can see his callouses from his many years of making violins. It just added to how inspirational he has been to members of the public in Liverpool and especially to us. I feel privileged to have spent so long with him and he wishes to keep in touch.

I did however, have trouble with the focus on the DSLR, as it became temperamental and difficult to focus if I wanted to go extremely close to - for example - Michael's hands working on his table top. I worked with it as much as I could, but noticed some of the shots could have been nicer.

The candlelit scenes looked beautiful on the Nikon, my favourite shot being of Michael's hands as he shaved the pieces of wood to ensure it was 3mm long. The shot goes on for approximately three minutes and on watching it back, it is mesmerising.

Our tutors came to visit us on set and told us that because our subject matter is so rich and Michael Phoenix is such a character, that we should make a longer cut to send out to festivals which we are really pleased with and it has spurred us on to work even harder. We are filming again tomorrow to make sure we have plenty of footage to work with and that means I can tighten up the focus on the Nikon. This means we now have three edits to work towards; the five minute one for university, a longer one for Michael and a longer one for possible festivals.