Production
After all the paperwork had been done, location found, actors in place, and crew ready to go, it was finally time to begin filming. We had all arrived at SAE at 9 am as the meeting point to grab all the equipment and head out to animations student Arash’s house to shoot as he was kind enough to provide us with his location after some difficulties in finding one. We had arrived and so did the actors.
Once inside the location we set up all the equipment, our director was going through the script, the producer was arranging props and I was setting up the tripod and black magic camera as the cinematographer. What I had noticed was that our actress seemed to be off to begin with, like she did not want to be there anymore, and after a few shots of filming she had let us know that she would not come back for a second day for unknown reasons which then forced us to film all of her scenes in a rush to get them done on the same day. In hindsight, we should have paid her for her time and gotten another actress where we could really capture the perfect shots we were looking for without being stressed on time.
The shots we were able to get overall looked great when on the tripod, and we did decide to do some handheld shots that ended up looking a little too shaky. That is something I would like to make less of a habit of going into future studio units as some shots ended up being unusable due to the shakiness.
During the film set, our now former art director was causing a little bit of a scene as she was sleeping on set, attempting to direct the actors on what they should be doing, as well as using some of the groups budget to get breakfast before the shoot, however at the end this did not hamper our spending on anything that we needed to get. However, the group ended up getting very frustrated and the events that were unfolding and it did slow us down when it came to getting shots done. Due to our art directors troubles, our producer emailed our lecturer stating everything that she had done, where then our lecturer gave our producer full permission to fire her if he felt the need to do so, in which he did and fired her from the production. After this had happened, the art director left the set and also took some of the props she had with her which left us without any blood to film one of our last scenes. We then had to improvise and mix a variety of red sauces until we got to the similar color of blood.
I was not very pleased with our actors performances and let my group members know, however I couldn’t have much of an input when it came to directing them as that is the directors job and his vision of how he sees the characters. Some shots that myself and the director have put together ended up not looking great such as when our actress was meant to be in a very upset state, we did not show her face clearly which is what the audience would want to see. I believe that for future studio units we would be able to make sure that every single shot has a very clear purpose no matter what the circumstance and this was a lesson learned.
For the audio of the film, we collaborated with audio student Sami, who also helped us in getting any props we needed. I believe we all made certain mistakes such as lighting, using the clapper, knowing how to direct actors, however what I am pleased with is that we understand and know our mistakes which will enable us to improve going forward to not make those same mistakes.
After the first day of shooting wrapped up, we had a second day of shooting with just our main actor as our actress said previously that she would not come on the second day, this made us rush as she initially let us know that she would be available for both days and we had no idea she would back out of the second, we were especially not expecting being informed of this during the set on the first day of shooting, but we managed to get her shots out of the way. Despite much less shots on the second day, we had taken the same amount of time to shoot just going back and forth to the mall getting props we needed that we had not planned on ahead of time, which cannot be done in the future as we need to be very time efficient.
Many of the shots we took were very over exposed after reviewing all the footage when we were done which was strange to all of us as while filming it looked perfect on the camera screen. I take full responsibility of the over exposed footage, however, also being the editor I was able to reduce the exposure. Of course this has not taught me the lesson that we are able to fix any mistakes we make in post production, the harder we work on each step, the easier it makes the next and the less amount of times we would have to go into scramble mode. Despite an inefficient, slow day of shooting, we obtained all the shots we needed to complete the film.
After reviewing all the shots and putting together a rough draft for our lecturer to have a look at in class, we came to the realization that we had some continuity errors in our shots, as well as a unsatisfying ending. In class our classmates and lecturer let us know of different scenarios we should have ended the film with rather than what we had, and thankfully we were given a chance to reshoot the ending of the film by our lecturer.
We then had a shoot date scheduled for Saturday December 2nd where we would have the opportunity to correct certain mistakes we made, which personally is an exciting feeling as I would love to make this film as good as it’s potential, I was very much looking forward to seeing us all improve in our designated roles as well as have a better eye in seeing what works and does not work.
On the day of the reshoot, we all arrived before the actor, we were not able to bring back the actress for a small reshoot of her dead body on the bed, so we had to resort to putting our director in the bed with a wig on, and to better mask the fact that it wasn't actually her, we covered him with a blanket and proceeded to pour fake blood on the wig. We also managed to reshoot some of the kitchen scenes due over exposed and reflective lighting on the first day of shooting. With not having our art director on set who previously caused many issues as I mentioned previously, the shoot went a lot smoother and felt much more of a stress free environment. We made improvements in terms of both camera work for myself, and directing as we were able to give the actor a better sense of direction which in return brought out a better version of our character Tom/Jack.
I enjoyed the experience of working with my fellow crew members, even the ones who may have made life a little more difficult as we may face these types of situations and people in the real world, so it's much better to get used to that from now so that it doesn't affect us in any major projects we may get the chance to work on in the future. I also look forward to hopefully experiencing working with crew members that I have not yet had the chance to work with since Trimester one and get to know how they operate as well.