Anzac parade

Ok, enough wasting time playing with other people's blog templates, it must be about time I posted a blog.

Next week (the 25th) is Anzac day. People in Australasia take the day off to comemorate the brave acts of the Australian New Zealand Army Corps in WW1. I won't get into the details of the day in history, you can read about that here .

Every year there is a dawn service in virtually every town/city in NZ. In recent years these have become more popular as the grandchildren of the troops learn about anzac day at school.
A few years ago we were filming at a school in Hamilton for the Ministry of Education. The class were studying Anzac day (as you do at this time of year) and so were going to the dawn service in hamilton as a class.

We decided it would be a good idea to go along and film a few shots of the service for use as cut-aways. We got there at some ridiculous hour (about 5am if I remember correctly) and got set up. We took a few shots of the kids in the crowd and the soldiers guarding the anzac plaque.
At the break of dawn the RSA band started and RSA soldiers (mostly from WW2) marched behind them. I saw the opportunity to get another shot and quickly found a spot where I could see over the crowd. I fired up the sun-gun on my camera (this is a sun-gun. They are made to light up large areas and are incredibly bright) and the street was instantly lit up.
With that the RSA band fumbled and stopped playing. The soldiers lost their step and a few bumped into the band.
:-S
Oops....

After a few seconds the conductor got them all back into position and they started again.... (and I got the shot ;-)

I don't take cameras to dawn services any more...