Day 2- First Day of Filming

I was a little nervous about our first day of shooting, as I had never directed anything on that scale. We arrived on location at 9:30 and told Jonathan to meet us they around 10:00 this gave us time to quickly talk through the shooting schedule. We decided to shoot the second part of the scrip first, where we George stumble out of the cupboard, we had told Jonathan not to shave so they where a clear difference in appearance to show that time had past.

When Jonathan arrived on set I quickly brief him about what was happening and to recap what part of the scrip we where filming. As they where still a little bit of the room that needed changing we decided to film the woodland area first. On the walk down to the wood it gave us time to really get to know Jonathan and learn a lot about his acting experience, this walk really helped to calm my nerves and helped build a connection with the actor. We only needed a couple of shots and cutaways in the wood so it didn’t take us too long.  Jonathan was really cooperative and helpful, as Rose and Hannah where sorting out the technical side I talked through the section of the scrip and how I wanted him to act.

When we got back to the location, the rest of the crew finished the set design, set up all the lighting and the tripod, this was really helpful as it enabled us to get straight on with filming. The first shot we filmed was the shot where Jonathan stumbles out of the cupboard. As before I talked to him Jonathan about how I wanted to him to act, while the rest of the group sorted out the technical side.  This was great as it enabled us to be quite efficient when it came to shooting and meant that Jonathan wasn’t waiting around.

The room was very warm and meant we had to take regular breaks. We decided that after every scene we would take a ten-minute break. This turned out to be really useful as it meant we could change the position of the tripod or even lay tracks with out Jonathan been in the room. This just made everything run a lot smoother.  I had a couple of issues keeping track of what shot and take we where on, in hindsight I should have really asked on of the editors to keep track, I was little disappointed as this just made us look at little unprofessional.

Things where running pretty smoothly until it came to the second to last scene where Jonathan is looking outside the window, the point of view shot. I really like the idea of using point of view shots, as you get to see what the main character is seeing, We had three point of view shots which I decided to film at the end of day as I knew that they would need quite a bit of time to get right. We started with the shot where Jonathan is looking outside the window. I stayed inside the room as Louis went outside to play the role of the girl in the red coat, we had a little trouble communicating and I was getting a little frustrated as the footage wasn’t turning out the way I wanted it to, after a couple of takes the shot just wasn’t working. We have had trouble with point of view shots all day and decided to call it a day. We thanked Jonathan and briefed him about the second day shooting.

Before filming the last shot of the room slowly changing I decided to look through the point of view footage, it just didn’t go with the rest of the footage.  We decided to re-film that scene again tomorrow.The final scene went quite well as we decided to make five changes to the set, then filmed for ten seconds. We continued this step until the room was tidy and ready for filming tomorrow.  overall i was very happy with how the filming went the footage look great and the story seemed to be really coming together.