First Day of Filming

The first day of filming could have gone a lot better. Time pressure meant we had to make cuts in the schedule including a whole scene.

Our first task of the day was set preperation and this went reasonably well. To create the illusion of evening at 9:00 in the morning we pegged a dark red sheet over the window and attached black-out matirial to the outside of Katie's front door (we filmed the whole thing at her house). Then we set out food for people to pick-out which we hoped would reflect the low-key party atmosphere we were trying to create.

Here are couple of examples of our efforts:

We found that anything can look sophisticated if you put parsly on it.

This was intended to poke fun at some of the posy food you get served at partys. It's mini-toblerone with mayonaise and again parsley.

We started filming with the exchange between Joe and Sarah because Bobby wasn't scheduled to get there for another 2 and a half hours and since we had Matt and Katie in the same place it seemed foolish not to get the shot reverse shot and the cutaways of her ukelele done. We spent a strangly long time finalising her costume. We thought the bow would give her a childish quality that Katie tends to convey in her charectors anyway.

Next we wanted to get Matt's half of the reaction shots we'd be using in the rejection montage to signify the passing of time. To do this we shined a light on the wall behind him to create a plain white backdrop and asked him to pull a variety of bizare expressions for the camera which we could pick from later and mix with similar footage of Katie, Megan (who was supposed to be arriving that afternoon) and myself.

After Katie had left to meet Bobby at the station I kept working with Matt on the montage. I had an idea as to how it would end that one of the girls would through water on him and you'd see it trickling down the lense blurring his face. We set up carefully with a towel on the floor and I was ready to experiment only everytime I started to tip the glass (having covered the lense in cling-film of course!) Matt would start laughing. I'm still not sure how we over-came this in the end but we did. Disappointingly the footage didn't come out all that well. In heinsight I'd like to play with the focus on this- it's something I might pick-up on when we re-film some bits next Sunday.

After 12 the schedule started going astray. When Bobby arrived we went straight into filming the stairs scene which took about an hour and a half and we'd already been put back 45 minutes or so by the trains. This was mostly due to a line we'd put in to condense several so as to cut down the running time and the amount of shot reverse shot which was the main critisism I got for my animatic. The line was: I love you Mike but I see us as more of a Lennon and McCartney than a Colin and Justin. Matt couldn't say it. One time he even came out with 'I see us as a Paul McHeather McCartney story?' In the end the best solution I could come up with was Matt saying 'I love you Mike but-' and Bobby cutting in with 'But you see us as more of a Lennon and McCartney than a Colin and Justin'. It worked.

A major problem we had with the party scenes was keeping the illusion of there being many people milling about when infact we only had three extras if you included Katie who was playing Sarah as well. The best solution was Katie fetching out a selection of hats and hoodies people could wear so that from behind they looked like different people. Example's are shown below:

Finally after Matt left we recorded a few cuttaway's a pick-ups with suprising success. We didn't get nearly enough as we were all very tired and wanted to finish so we could have the cheesecake which had been serving as the insentive to keep going for the the last 6 hours. But I got some reasonable shots of Megan and Katie to insert into the last scene to give it a bit of diversity.

I found looking back time pressures had forced us to leave a lot out but I plan to make a detailed list of shots to pick up on next Sunday before it comes round including showing Matt and Bobby what I already have and seeking their opinions amongst others.