30th October
Today was the shooting day for our film. We met at 9.30 (ish) at my house, had a team meeting and camera check, and did our first shot around 10.30. We had expected rain, so had come prepared with umbrellas, raincoats and the like. Fortunately, the rain held off for the day, which made shooting much quicker and easier. We mainly stuck to the shooting schedule and storyboard, although we sometimes played around with the shots and angles to see what would work best. We also changed the schedule order to do all of the rich man's scenes first, so Reuel only had to change once, speeding up the shoot.
We started out with Reuel as the rich man, filming on the streets. Our locations were quite vague, so we spent about 5 minutes wandering around and looking for locations. Once we chose our first location, we had to spend another 10 or so minutes setting up the equipment and positioning the camera. At around 10.30, half an hour after we had planned to start, we took our first shot of the day. I had not realised how long it would take to set up the equipment, and I worried that we would not have enough time to film everything. As we got used to setting up, however, we became quicker and more efficient, preparing to shoot in around 3 minutes.
One factor that we had not considered enough was the public. As well as the obvious problems of members of public/cars walking in front of camera, we also had to deal with other issues. One of the locations we shot at was a bus stop, where, unsurprisingly, buses stopped. This caused an issue for filming, and we were lucky that we were filming at a quieter time of day. Whilst we were filming at the bus stop we also got honked at twice, which was rather off-putting. The worst problem for me to face was when we were filming the homeless scenes on the main road. The people walking past were giving us incredibly dirty looks, which was very uncomfortable and off-putting. However, we continued filming through all of that, getting all the shots we needed before moving on.
One very successful element of our film was the props and costumes. Kiira did wonderfully with the props, especially with the newspapers and cardboard for the homeless man. The costumes as well really added to the effect, with there being a very obvious difference between rich Reuel and poor Reuel. Tascha also added make-up for the homeless man, which made Reuel look very grubby and dirty, adding to his character.
During the production, I did the sound at the beginning of the day and assistant directing at the end. I learnt a lot about setting up the sound, as at the beginning of the day I had no idea how to do it but by the end I could do it quite proficiently. The only problem came around 1pm when the sound completely disappeared. After a lot of fiddling around, Nick managed to sort it out, and it worked successfully until the day ended. After lunch I swapped roles with Tascha and became the assistant director. I was in charge of doing the clapper-board and writing down which shots worked. However, due to a lack of communication and a sense of rush, this was very difficult to do. In the end, I did what Tascha had done after about 10 takes and abandoned the cataloguing. This made shooting a lot easier, but I'm sure it will cause problems during editing.
Overall, the day was good. It was tiring, frustrating, patience testing and trying, but the group worked together well and got everything we needed to get done before 4pm. It was a very successful day, and I have learnt many skills and experienced many things that I am sure will be useful in making future films.
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