We just finished from our first weekend of shooting and it was intense. We started out at 4am and on our first day we finished around 9pm and on the second day we finished around 4am.
It was rather exhausting but the reward was towering over our fatigue with pride.
On our first day I decided to arrange the shooting schedule to focus on Andrew and Alana. I also wanted to shoot all the scenes chronologically as it will help the actor and the actress to get into the zone better. As they will pretty much have to build their relationship and live through the relationship as if they are going through it themselves in a normal world where no one can defy space and time continuum (as in cinema you can bend time as you please)
It was an early start and we were fortunate enough to get a rather nice sun rise even though it was quite cloudy. We captured our first shot in RAW format because we wanted that high dynamic range so we can play with it more in post production.
I decided to shoot most of the scenes on hand held and shoulder rig as I wanted to portrait the volatile state of these characters' emotions.
The scene that was most difficult for the actors would have been the one before the last one we did on that day. It a physically and mentally demanding scene for Andres (playing Andrew), it required him to pretty much break himself down completely and shatter his emotion in pieces. It was exhausting enough to see him go through it and when we tried to capture on the cameras ( we had two rolling at the same time for this) , it was seen clearly on our monitor that this scene can not be done more than 10 times for a healthy actor and at most 20 takes. We did it in a few takes but the one we decided on was a take that lasted 6 minutes close to 7 minutes.
I am a sucker for a long take shot and with what we captured I was over the moon. We ended the day a few aches and feeling sleep deprived but other than that we were ready to shoot on our second day.
Our second day looked on paper to be a lot less emotionally exhausting than the first day but when we finished at 4am, we felt like it was a different kind of challenge. It was again an early start and we shot some of Andrew's scenes in the morning while we lined up a scene of Andrew and the man in the suit in the afternoon, and end the day with three scenes of Andrew and Vincent.
We had a lot of fun in the morning with a "snorri cam" scene and we will possibly use it again, with Max's (Director of Photography) ingenuity, he managed to come up a DIY rig utilising a tripod and a backpack with an LED light on top of the camera. It did take too long to set it up and since that point we became a little bit delayed for the rest of the day but it was worth it.
Another scene that came across a few difficulties was the scene between Andrew and the man in the suit. It needed a very specific level of tension and hostility between the two of them to make this scene work and all I can say is that I wish I have more budget and more time. I wish that we had the whole day for this scene so we didn't have to rush through it. The end result was much more better than what I expected with the amount of time we had.
So what did I learn from the two days of shooting? Many, Many, Many things.
I found out more about myself that I wouldn't trade this for anything else in life, I do really want to become a film director and writer. I love being on set and interacting with the actors. I love that I can manipulate things into the way I want the audience to see my work. I love everything about film making.
I wish that I had more budget that can give me more time to work more on each scene. So then I can afford better equipment that I can use to enhance my work even more.
PS: status - heavily sleep deprived, exhausted but happy and hopeful with next weekend.
I also have to apologise with grammatical errors and what not, I cannot be bothered to proof read everything.
