The filming was kind of a long process, but maybe it didn’t need to be? Or maybe it did?

The first night of filming at the Thornbury Bowls Club was for a test shoot with mine and Rosie’s camera, to work out which one we wanted to use for her film. The second night of filming involved us getting establishing shots of the location. The third night of filming involved us mainly shooting Rosie’s script. And the fourth night of shooting involved us mainly shooting Bell’s script and getting any other shots we needed to get.

Perhaps we didn’t need an entire night of filming just to get establishing shots and filler shots, but it certainly made it a lot easier having multiple shots to choose from. For the two nights of shooting we certainly didn’t get that much coverage, which meant in the edit we were somewhat stuck using certain shots because we didn’t have other options. This was mainly because of time limitations with actors and batteries on cameras dying and such. I’m so neurotic I would have happily spent two nights shooting establishing shots and filler shots and two nights on each shoot, but not everyone wants to rearrange the rest of their life to fit around such projects. I get a tad obsessive if I’m allowed, which can often benefit me, although I do become a giant pain in everyone else’s ass.

The main thing I learnt from the filming process was that you can plan out exactly what you want to do, and how your going to do it, but once you get into the location with the actors this plan often changes – however, you are still much better of having the plan than none at all! As the neurotic freak I am, I had all the shots I wanted to use storyboarded. I had originally planned to shoot all the establishing shots, stick them in a timeline and then also shoot the other shots (with fill in actors) and add them to the timeline to see how it looked. Of course no one else was interested in spending an entire night shooting the film – but with them as stands in – just so I could complete my psychotic endeavour of creating the faux film, then reflecting on it, then shooting the real thing. This was probably for the best as we’d already spent so much time filming already.

I was kinda bummed that we couldn’t have a second day with both sets of actors, to refine the footage – after reviewing what we’d shot. It seemed much too difficult and demanding to try and get the actors to put in another night of shooting each. So we made do with what footage we had.

Overall I quite enjoyed the filming process and am pretty keen to work on another short film project. I think the main thing I learnt from the process was that it’s actually not that hard to organise if you’ve got the right people and people who are enthusiastic. and that coming out with a great product is not unachievable.

 

Until next time,

Louise Wilson