Filming Week: Day 1, Tuesday

From the 13th- 17th of April was our scheduled shooting week for our group project.  We had planned to film two of the scenes from our teaser 'The Beast of Fawkes' on location at Sandy Point, across three of these days.  It was a very busy few days, but I also learnt a lot over them.   
As it turned out, we could only film three of the days anyway.  While the week before and the week after were beautiful we ended up with a hail storm our first intended shooting day.  Our Monday started with an attempt to tie down a tarp over the trailer.  With just tangled pieces of string. In the rain. And the wind and hail.  On the side of a road.  Needless to say, we decided to call off the shoot.

This actually worked out quite well.  It turned out that Art Department wasn't quite as ready with the costumes as they had thought, and this also gave me a little extra time to make my call-sheets a bit easier to understand.


Going into our filming week, there were two points I felt very strongly about.  Firstly, we would film according to the storyboards and animatic.  I didn't want any extra shots being filmed 'just because' and us then running out of time to get the shots scheduled for that day. 

While I know that film makers often go on set and then see shots they think would look cool and want to film them, I wanted our crew to realize the importance of the storyboards and animatic in our pipeline. 

We had two days unscheduled, so if there were 'cool' shots or other things needed this would be the time.  What I would allow though, was slight changes in angle or composition where I knew that these were issues that had been brought up previously about a shot, or if they were related to the set or equipment limitations.
 
Secondly, I didn't want to be 'that' person.  The one who sends out call-sheets for the next day at 1am, when crew members should be sleeping.  This is one area that I wish I could have done better in.  While things never got so bad as that, I realized quickly why a 2nd AD often helps out with getting call-sheets ready during the day.  


We rescheduled our first day of shoot for Tuesday.  Our first day was always one that I knew would have moments of greatness and times where things simply didn't work out as planned.  It was a day where we would see how things would fall into place, or not.  It was also a day where we had been very loose with our scheduling.

We planned to shoot as much as we could at the location, with anything else rescheduled for the next day.  Originally I had intended to schedule the day across two days right from the start, however I am quite inexperienced when it comes to guessing how long things will take to film.  At the urging of crew members I decided that the flexible approach to the day was the best way to get as much done as we could, without making us feel over pressured.        



On Tuesday morning we didn't quite trust the weather but we went ahead anyway.  When we got out to Sandy Point it was quite dark under the trees, but also quite sheltered and we ended up getting quite a lot done.

We had a few moments of the normal stumbling around, everyone trying to figure out their roles and how to work together with the others but I think this was actually one of our better days for group dynamics.  A few things that didn't work out so well was some delay's on the second van trip which was meant to get everyone out to set, and also some delays with my equipment Van in the morning as I had to pack the trailer by myself at the Tin Shed, and there had also been a communication breakdown to the Gaff team as they hadn't been told what the lighting plans were.



The other thing that didn't work out was lunch and, unfortunately, this would become a common theme across our shooting days.  I still don't know what went wrong, as I was never told, so I can only assume that it simply wasn't ready on time.  Lunch was scheduled for 1:30pm.  After our late start for the reasons mentioned above, we decided to push it back an hour, until 2:30pm.

A group left to go pick up some things and check on lunch.  They didn't come back. At around 3:00pm I decided to send the first two people, who would need to stay with the gear while the rest of us were gone, back to unit.  The rest of us decided to keep at it, and film what we could.  

Finally, the Van returned.  By the time we had finished our lunch it was getting late.  We were losing the light, and honestly I would have been happy to call it a day.  As it was, people wanted to push on; to try to get some more out of the day while the weather held.  In hindsight I should have gone with my gut.  As it was, our actor was tired; she had been on set all day with out actually appearing in a shot (a bad move on my part for scheduling), it was getting so dark by the time we had set up we had to film fast, and in the end we decided after reviewing the footage that we wanted to re-shoot it anyway.  It was the one major point I had conceded all day, and one of those moments where I wished I hadn't.