Twenty-five years ago, when I was studying Archaeology in Film at Lampeter I imagined myself as a more Brummie Indiana Jones or a slightly taller Tony Robinson, not one of CITiZAN’s Steven Spielberg’s. But as time passed my thoughts turned from being an on-screen star to being the guy with the camera. And these days if you’ve got a smart phone anyone can get outside and make their Hollywood dreams come true. So, with Covid regulations starting to ease and a taste for creating movie magic, the CITiZAN team decided to film live tours around some of our favourite archaeological beaches and post them on our YouTube channel.

I was all set to film live on the beach, wandering among the anti-invasion defences and weaving through holiday makers, as I recorded our resident conflict archaeologist talking about his favourite subject. But then the great British weather intervened, and the Met Office predicted the first named storm of the summer would wash over the coast just when we wanted to film. We were forecast to miss the worst of the weather, but did we want to battle a sandstorm during a live broadcast? We ummed and ahhed, and then decided we’d pre-record the tour and run a live Q&A from Chris’s home office.

That meant that before we did the live broadcast, we would have to record Chris giving the tour on the ground, with enough time for everything to be edited together before the question-and-answer session. So, we decided to head out today and get the filming done before the weather turned. On the fly videos can be fun, but it’s better to have some idea of what you’re going to film before you rock up on location. At least a shot order and some talking points, if not a full-blown script. As director, camera person and general gopher that meant a bit of prep for me the morning before, deciding where we were going to start and finish filming, what order we were going to visit the sites in and roughly how long we were going to film at each site for. Once Chris was happy with the schedule he could sit down and decide what he was going to say.

Once we’d made it out to Auburn Sands the first order of the day was a quick recce along the beach, to make sure nothing had changed to much since our last visit. Had any of the pillboxes collapsed? Were the anti-tank cubes we wanted film beside covered by sand? Had any picnickers set up camp for the day next to where we wanted to film? Happily everything we wanted to video was accessible, and we were almost ready to film. Just a little more planning to go. Which way was Chris going to move around site? Where was he going to stand? Would that mean he was bleached out by the sun? Or obscure the archaeology he wanted to talk about? 

Once everything was planned out, it was time to film. We were looking to film about an hours’ worth of footage across half a dozen locations; surprisingly that’s about four hours of filming once you set up the shot, film several takes and move on to the next location. We also wanted to film a little B-roll too just in case - Chris sauntering down the beach, the waves breaking along the shoreline, that sort of thing. 

Time to get busy then.

Once everything was filmed, we headed back to the office to upload all the footage to the cloud and hand the editing over to Grant, to smooth into a seamless tour. Then there was just time to do a little bit of social media to advertise the live event tomorrow before heading home for a nice cup of tea.

If you fancy seeing the fruits of our labour then join us on YouTube at 1pm tomorrow, to explore the wonders of Auburn Sand’s concrete archaeology.