Half way there now, everything seemed to go wrong, we lost another Chloe, had issues with tapes and were unable to film at some locations. This all led to a day where two thirds of a scene was filmed and I ended up drowning my sorrows and hopelessly tried to stumble my way through a pivotal scene (take that oliver reed).
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Tom brought up an interesting point today. He mentioned that it is going to be weird filming with another group of people, then another, as the dynamic will change. It is true; we started with us and paul, then it was us and Stu then almost every character and then the end of today we realized it is time to move on to another phase. Tomorrow will be just us and Persephoné. Today we finished all of Stu's scenes and the dynamic will be completely different tomorrow. Whether things will be easier or not is
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This was the day that I was most worried about in pre-production. Six actors and no crew. Being one of the people before camera it took a lot of planning to think of where to shoot from and which parts to film first, as Steve and Tom had to leave to get up for work early, then Stu had to get home to start packing, then we had to film an intense confrontation which would go on till the early hours. After the initial stress of keeping everyone under control to get what we needed, things started to run smoothly, but in terms of cracking up, it is official - NEVER put Stu and Jimbo in a room together, not only are they the most distracting people to have behind camera, but they bring an excitable energy to everyone which causes endless corpsing amongst the actors.
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Today we started working on scenes with Stu (playing David) as he is only available for three days, as he moves back home to Birmingham on the weekend. It has been an odd test for us all, not because of any technical difficulties but because we have just found it so hard to keep straight faces. It goes without saying that I'm going for a serious social-realist film, but working with someone that you've only made comedies with really doesn't help.Stu is a great actor but also the most off-putting person to have around when you need to be acting solemn. The faintest hint of a smile or twitch and it's onto the next take. Tomorrow should be interesting, we are filming scenes with Jimbo (who is playing Adrian) and he is equally as bad an influence.
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Well, well, well, it's all going rather grand. Started the day with a couple of scenes between Paul and Tom. Only issues we had were people, dogs and those who are classified in between, children. The sun kept hiding from us behind clouds now and then which meant we had to film for five minutes, stop, then go again. But overall I was impressed, not only with Tom who understood how seriously I was going to take the project from the get-go, but with Paul; brought in at the last minute as I had to have a major reshuffle with cast, he really got into the role and surprised me with how he brought to life a character who only appears for 2-4 minutes of screen time, and is sure to be remembered after the credits role.
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Well the shoot has begun, and so far so good. Tonight I shot the first images with Paul (his role won't be revealed till the film, it's quite important). My biggest concern before filming was that I had never filmed outdoors at night and I never got a chance to check the location's light situation beforehand. But, much to my surprise, the streetlight added an incredible background glow and the light within the car added clarity to the foreground, leaving me with images that I think are some of the best I've ever captured.
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