Director's Daily Shooting Blog

10.40am.

No car pick-up today as later call and shooting in centre makes it too hard for parking and too expensive with NCP fees and congestion charge.

Blog starting a little late today as poor Marina, my wonderful assistant, had an unfortunate incident in Dalston. It cost her an ipod and she was so shook up that she was delayed getting to set with the lap top. Thank God he didn’t also steal that .

Marina is helping me with all the transcendental directorial prep as well as wild goose chases on things that might be useful as props and costume accessories and on top of administering the bible, my master shot list and delivering t to the HOD’s each day!
Also I’ve just discovered now that Hugh, our Sound Recordist, has developed Bronchitis after the rain sodden shoot on Hampstead Heath on the first day probably. I’ve just texted my best friend Simon who is a Doctor to ask him what is the best thing to get him.

Shoot today is right in the centre of Covent Garden. Real people walking into and through shot. Luckily the scenes to shot are quite simple. The whole location permission thing has been hard to sort here as there are so many people to ask. My real fear is that one of the residents complains to the police of to security and chucks us off part of the location. Part of a scene takes place in a small walkway into a serene courtyard. It is surrounded by hundreds of apartments and is in that grey area of public/private property. The public have right of way but are we part of the public? The answer is yes as long as we don’t actually block it. Of course, though, I have a little tracking shot on a dolly to shoot in it!!!

3.37pm

Sitting in the café opposite our location chatting to a woman with amazing earrings called Rachel. She is an image consultant. We are in amongst everyone, crew with passersby, real people. Rachel is very interested in the shoot.

The first part of the day has gone well so far. In the earlier scenes of Callum crossing the street we had some amazing car crossings and luckily he didn’t get run over by any of them either. Not even the impromptu Vintage Rolls Royce car appearance!

In the latter part of the scene we had some people looking down the barrel of the lens but that’s the normal thing when shooting out on the streets. It even happen with the silent turn over and action all by hand signals.

I’ve just got two shots left on the main scene and then some slow motion coverage of the same action for use in the flashbacks. I hate slow motion created in post. It just looks so fake compared to the real thing. That is one of the great things about shooting on film rather than HD.

When we originally conceived this project we were going to shoot the film on HD. For years I have resisted the peer pressure from the UK film industry to shoot on HD but finally I succumbed to it as we had a camera donated to us for shoot. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, the camera fell through and re-jigging things I realized it would only cost us £3k more to shoot on film with all the deals we had in place.

The other thing about film is it just “feels right” - having to change magazines, having run throughs on camera, slates that really mean something. The only problem of course is film stock – i.e. it costs money. That makes me a little bit more careful about when to turn over and how much improvisation to do in front of it. At the moment I am quite loose but will tighten up the shooting ratio as the actors gain confidence and I see some rushes to properly gauge them for the camera. Also shooting on film gives more urgency to the performance. Rather than endless amounts of tape the actors know that it must happen between action and cut. That the magic is required THEN and at no other time....OK. Lunch over. Back to set!