Major Project: Shoot Day 1

Shoot day 1: 

Maidstone Mote Park & 180 Upper Fant house

What the day consisted of;

Shoot day 1 took place in Maidstone and featured 2 locations. Maidstone mote park as well as a private house in Maidstone. This shoot day was actually the longest as it was a 12 o’clock start and ended up finishing at around 12. I had a crew and cast of 6 and it was still a somewhat stressful for a variety of reasons.

I will start by talking about all the things that didn’t go so well since it played a major part in the entire shoot day.

What didn't go so well
Issue 1
First of all, my camera man and production assistant where late together. My sound operator was also late, and one of my actors. This then set me back by a whole hour but I thought it would be fine because I catered my schedule for a little bit of lateness.
So, after briefing everyone about what the plans where for the rest of the day, I proceeded to packing all the equipment and sorting out transport. This was another obstacle because I had 6 people including myself  and x2 cars (Rosie's and Matt on sound) but due to all the equipment a lot f the seats were filled to the maximum. This meant that I had to take a separate cab. I had to get a cab that would be big enough for the BMX bike so that meant I had to wait a little for the specific sized car to become available. These are little details that seem like you can just sort out on the day but actually, whilst doing so, these "minor" inconveniences actually dug into my shooting time quite a lot. I will later get into the impact it had. 

Issue 2
So, we now arrive at Maidstone Mote Park, it takes a little while to decant all the necessary kit, food and props. We only wanted to take one trip and the actual shooting spot was around a 7 minute walk. Upon walking to the spot, I had actually forgotten which section it was because all the leaves had fallen off since I first did my test shoots. This was another issue that delayed me further. I left the crew in a spot with the equipment whilst I ran to a few different spots before realising they where actually closer to the shooting location anyway. So, by now we have cut into the shoot time by an hour and nothing has even started.

What I learnt form this issue:
I learnt that in the future I need to make time to revisit the chosen location nearer the time of the shoot because so many things can change and you may find that when you get to the shoot, you may not be able to use it. I cant afford for something like that to ever happen so making time to check over every location is something I will definitely benefit from.

Issue 3
We finally arrive at the location, set up and begin to shoot. This became the bigger issue, one that I did not cater for either. So, when I completed my first initial test shoot, I believe I conducted it on a weekday. It was nice and quiet with minimal people around. However, on my shoot day this was simply not the case and it had a very big impact on the shoot. Due to actors availability, my first shoot fell on a Saturday so there were so many children and adults and dogs and literally everything you could think of. There were so many disruptions when shooting which meant we had to do multiple takes of everything. A task which would've realistically taken under an hour to shoot on a quiet day had now taken 2 hours because I had children and grown adults purposely shouting at the camera, and making the presence known. I had people using water boats on the river whilst I was trying to shoot and I had to wait for them to stop before continuing. As you can imagine, this was very frustrating for both me and the actors. By this time we were also losing daylight which was a major thing so I really had to hurry. So because I was now rushing to move onto the next scene I compromised on the takes. There were little things I noticed but I didn't have time to do it over again with hope I could sort it in the edit. After shooting the riverside conversation which was the most important thing, I then had around 4 individual Isaiah scenes to shoot, this required outfit changes as well. This next part was super rushed and I only got to shoot 1 scene out of 4/5 due to all the delays as well as the camera not being able to perform well in low light. If I was using the Sony A7s, this wouldn't have been an issue. But I still wouldn't have needed this if I had planned my shoot properly. 

What I learnt from this issue
What I learnt was to compensate for noise disturbances when creating a schedule. Sometimes you are left with no choice when choosing shoot days so you really have to think about what type of noise disturbances there will be and let that reflect in the schedule. My shoot day for this first shoot day was already demanding however these things should have been catered for. Realistically, This should've been split into two days but I wanted to save money and not have to get my actors all the way back to maidstone again. My female actress wasn't available for the Tuesday which I saved as a reserve day. 

Issue 4
So, after finishing up in mote park, I had to make the same journey back to the maidstone house. being advised by my camera op, I managed to remain on time because we decided to leave at the time which was scheduled. We arrived at the house and due to everyone being tired I allowed a longer break and had to order hot food. We had to wait a long time for food to arrive and I thought it would be unfair to make my actors continue without feeding them just to stay on schedule, so this actually delayed us by 45 minutes. Another delay was the actual set up which took a little bit longer than expected due to the fact it was a night shoot which was mainly reliant on a bonfire for light. So whilst I got the fire started, Sam set up the camera in the dark (he did a very good job) and we continued shooting. Whilst shooting I noticed my actress was not performing as she should. You could tell she just wanted to go home because she kept checking her phone between takes and her expressions where very half hearted. I didn't want to keep telling her about it to sound like a parent so I eventually just left it. 

what I learnt from this issue:
I thought about how good it would've been to have an extra pair of hands. Someone to call cabs and order food on time instead of just after finishing would've saved me an hour or two. That is a luxury I simply did not have because no one wanted to help me on my shoot. So again, I learnt the importance of not underestimating how long these little tasks take. I also thought about whether I should be a little more stern as a director because the constant phone checking became a slight delay in the filming process but I chose not to say anything. (Partly because being late was my fault and I felt responsible for the morale of the crew)

What went well
When thinking about what went well on the shoot day, the main thing to think about is how helpful everyone was. With a small crew, we were already strained but the way everyone came together to try and help was really nice to see. Especially Rosie, she really got stuck in and helped with whatever she could. Another thing that went well was you can really tell the difference when you pay someone to do a job. When looking at Sam Creamer and how efficient he is, you can really have confidence with knowing the set up time will be so much quicker because he really knows what he's doing. From my experience, when working with students only there can be a lot of faffing around. Sam really helped eliminate this and I was really grateful. Another thing that went well was the delivery of the dialogue by the cast. They made it look so easy because of how believable the delivery was and I never really had to direct them on how to say it because they already know. This is partly down to the fact we had a rehearsal the day before but because they were just simply good actors. Especially Moses. 

It was evident that my confidence as a Director has really grown. There wasn't really any doubt in my mind that I wouldn't be able to get things done or that I didn't have the ability to actually direct people, I was just a little bit more concerned about everyone else's well being and wanted them to be happy at all times which is something that induced a little bit of stress.

Overall experience
I had a very eye opening shoot day. I learnt the importance of time keeping so for the next shoot day I will try to make sure we follow the schedule as best as we can. I was happy and confident that we got all the shots needed (minus the scenes we were unable to get due to time restrictions)