The rush to the finish line

First post back since shooting my film The last two weeks have been intense. Where to start?

I was very fortunate to be able to finalise my cast a few days before shooting. Their enthusiasm was a big boost to me as it had been a while since I'd had some positive news. Ultimately, the thing I really want from my cast is positivity and cooperation - people who want the film to succeed as much as I do.

I'm not going to lie - I did find Sparks difficult to film. It took a while to implement some of the feedback i'd been given about simplifying the script. I'm glad I did as it was difficult enough just shooting in two locations and with four main cast members. But even during shooting I was still ammending the script as I wasn't entirely happy with some aspects of it. That obviously made it harder as it meant, in some cases, having to scramble to find extra cast members and props at short notice, which was stressful. One thing I regret, to a certain extent, was not having a seperate art director and/or producer. On set, I ended up spending a decent chunk of time on the phone arranging things (e.g. phoning the police communications dept to let them know we were filming with police lights). Although, I think that  would have bee less of a problem if I had shot the previous week as planned. Having to push my shoot dates meant sharing gear with Lana's shoot which meant it was a bit more work to sort out the gear. Having a few extra people around would have made it easier for me to focus on my job of directing the actors. To be fair though, I had originally lined up some of the first year students to help with some of this but they were signed up to be on Lana's shoot so I lost a few crew members there, and the remaining third year students were too busy to help. But the crew I did have did a fantastic job.

Another big challenge was that all of my film takes place at night and because daylight saving just started it doesn't get dark now until 9pm. We managed to get the interior scenes without too much trouble (by blacking out windows), but the exterior stuff was much more tricky. Stormy weather on the first two nights meant we had to finish shooting early and pushed a few scenes to the following day. Then there was a bit of protest from key persons about shooting past 10.30pm which meant I couldn't get everything I needed shot, and the stuff I did get was more rushed than I would have liked. On one hand, it was frustrating, but on the other I understand that people have work and other commitments and they are doing me a favour by helping me, so my options are limited. 

The next day we were scheduled to shoot all of the streetside scenes and car rig stuff but one of my cast was sick so we had to settle with just doing the car rigs. However, just as we were about ready to shoot, I discovered that I had misplaced the police lights I'd rigged up with the help of my flatmate! We hunted around for a while before conceeding that we were going to have to go without. Luckily, Ben (lead actor) saved the day by coming up with a great idea to use a cellphone app that simulates police lights - this actually ended up working reletively well.

I've started work on my edit but I'm not far enough into it to be able to comment too much at this stage. I still have one scene left to film tonight which means I won't get picture lock until Tuesday morning at the earliest, which leaves me one day to do all of my sound and grading. Gonna need a hellavalot of caffiene.

I would post some pics of my shoot, except my laptop screen died last night. It has been on the blink (literally) for some time, just hoped it would have survived another week or so. I'm typing this on my tablet and I don't know how to upload photos from here so I'll do that from tech when I get a free moment (hah! Free time? Yeahright!).

But all in all, got the main stuff in the can. I'm just hoping it will all cut alright considering I had to rush a lot of it. Regardless of the results, I'm very proud of my team and all of this year's filmies for pulling together to help each other out.

PICS UPDATE:

The sound team (Kyle and Kate) prepped for action.

Blocking out a scene in the hallway.

A bit of a peeping Ash shot as we review a take.

Dan - Guardian of the Light. 

Setting up for a dolly shot. It was originally going to be a jib shot but I felt the dolly
worked just as well and was much quicker to set up.

Ash's impressive car rig. I would have been much more
nervous about this kind of set up without Ash's expertise.

And here's the product of the car rig.