Post 18; Production report

Production Report- Day of filming.

some photo's i had taken during the production of our film

Our production took place on Sunday 4^th of March 2011. We arrived at the location, which was the director’s house at 10am in the morning. The actors names were Isabel Earey, aged 12 who was playing Isabel the daughter, Judith Earey who was playing the mother Lisa, and Louis Fernandez Marin who was playing the father, Simon. The actors were scheduled to arrive at 11am, so we would have time to set up, and prepare props, set design, and go through difficult shots that we thought would take a long time. When I arrived at the set, we were told that the actors would not be coming until 1 o clock as they had made arrangements. It was a shock to the crew as we needed to get started as soon as possible due to it being a long day ahead. We decided to set dress each location, we dressed the beauty room so it would look like a law office. We removed all the items that were not needed in the room, and dressed shelves with books, dictionaries and other documents that made the room look like an office.

As production designer, I decided to remove everything off the desk, and start from scratch. I included props such as a laptop, folders and papers scattered over the desk, a small lamp for lighting reasons, and professional use. I also decided it would be useful to place 2 mugs on the desk, which would look as though they would have been used, again for professional use. A pen holder, with an address book, pens and pencils was also placed on the table. While I was doing this the other members of the crew were designing the living room to fit the technical reccee designs. This took a good hour to prepare the house for shooting, and after we had done this the cast still was not there so we decided to go through individually shot by shot the different camera positions and how we would go about each shot.

By 2 o clock the Cast still had not arrived, which worried the team even more, and we had to think of a backup plan. We decided that if they had not arrived by half past 2, then we would call a friends sister who said she would be able to step in, and play Isabel and if worse comes to worse Anton (Director’s) mother and father would play Simon and Lisa. Time was ticking and everyone was getting even more stressed about filming, as we all knew it would take a long time. Eventually the director’s father got hold of them and they said they were on their way. At half past 2 the characters had arrived, and the crew were all ready to go as soon as they walked through the door.

As Isabel was doing her shots outside first, I needed to get her dressed and in character quickly. We had a slight problem as the costume I had put on the costume designs were not matching what the character had brought. I decided to put her in blue leggings, a turquoise skirt, and a blue jumper with a black cardigan over the top. Her hair was curly and wavy, and we decided to put a blue hair band in to make Isabel look more like a child. I also painted her nails a pink colour, as in the costume and props list it stated she needed her nails painted. A necklace with a heart was also put on Isabel, as again she needed to have some sort of jewellery on.  We had a slight problem with the shoes, as we could not get hold of the characters before hand; Isabel turned up in Ugg boots, and had no other source of shoes, so we had to go with the Ugg boots as we already had limited time to film in.

After we had got Isabel ready she went outside with the camera operator (Tim), the director, and the lighting and sound manager to start on the outside shots, while I had to dress and prepare the other cast, Simon and Lisa for their shots. Lisa bought along two different suits a dark blue one and a purple one, which I decided it would me more appropriate for her to wear the black suit. However, on my costume designs I had designed her to be in high heels and a skirt, unfortunately she did not have access to them. I also applied red lipstick and black mascara to Lisa, and tied her hair back as she looked more professional.

I dressed Simon in a black pin striped suit, and as we had numerous amounts of ties with him, we decided to pick one which has red lines in it, as it showed up the most, and gave a more extravagant look.

Once all the costumes were on the characters we were all ready to get going with the filming. When the crew was filming Isabel’s scenes outside I went outside and filmed small clips of the production crew filming, so we could show how we filmed different scenes. After the skipping scene was done it was time to film some scenes in the living room. We filmed the scenes which did not need blue gel’s at the time, so we filmed shots of Isabel walking into the living room, sitting down and playing with the train set.

Simon's costume

We took shots about four or five times, as if we were only to take one shot in each scene, then it would not be professional standards. We felt safer having a back up of each shot, and if the shot did not go to plan, we would re do it until it was perfect.

Isabel's costume

Lisa's costume

It did not take very long to film outside, and once finished we went inside and started filming some of the living room shots, as production designer i needed to ensure that everything on set was in the correct place, and all the props were on set, according to the costume and props list. Isabel’s scenes in the living room took place first and we got through those fairly quickly. When we filmed a new shot I had to make sure that continuity was not an issue. For example: I needed to put the pillows back in the correct place, if they were moved, and other continuity issues that could affect the filming.  Another continuity issue that had to be amended correctly would be the shots of the clock. We decided to shoot the entire close ups of the clock shots together to save even bigger continuity issues later on. To solve this we would attach blue tack to the table where the clock’s legs were, and then take off the clock, and change the time, then put it back in the correct position so we know it would not have moved.

As the day went on the lighting was getting darker and darker, and eventually created a yellow effect as the curtains were closed as well. The group had initially wanted to put blue Gel’s over the lights in the living room, and we needed to decide whether we would go ahead with it, and if so we needed to shoot as soon as possible as it was getting darker. After Isabel had shot her scenes in the living room, the actors who were playing Lisa and Simon we decided would film some scenes in the office while Ryan the lighting operator would put up the blue gels ready for us to go back into the living room to film.

It was getting late and we were very tired and everyone was getting stressed, it came 6 o clock in the evening and we still had over half to film. The characters kept of messing up their lines and we had to do a number of takes to ensure everything would go to plan, and we wouldn’t have to end up re filming. The office scenes took the longest to film, and the character playing Isabel was keen to get all of her shots done. After the office scenes were finished it was time to go back into the living room to finish the shots which needed the blue gels. With the blue gel’s on the lights it did cool down the atmosphere and made it look less warm and yellow. Again for continuity reasons I needed to ensure all of the props were placed in the correct places, from one scene to the other. By the end of the night around 11 o clock the cast and crew were extremely tired, and relieved our hard day of filming had pulled of, hoping that we would go home with good news, that we had pulled off a great short film!

Below, are some photo's which shows how Anton and myself had to re arrange the beauty Salon into a Law office.