Production Day 1

Our first production day was supposed to start early in the morning and knowing that some of us had to go to the M Stores we had to change our schedule a bit (the schedule is available in the previous post) Thankfully everyone was on time, however, setting up the lights and figuring out their position in a very small space took us quite a while and that is why we were almost one hour behind the schedule. Luckily, our actress Fleur who played Joe was doing an amazing job which helped us a lot in getting back on track in terms of time.

Overall, we managed to do all the shots we wanted which is absolutely amazing and left us feeling content with the day, however, it was clearly tiring and stressful as we weren’t really taught the roles on set and we only had two people from moving image which was the reason why, for instance, sound designers had to replace AC, AD, sparks and other roles which clearly affected our workflow. Another thing was that there were no gaffers on set which was also quite problematic as we had to work with lights and their positioning a lot. I used to work with lights a bit in my own practice so had a few lighting schemes in mind and tried to come up with something in addition to working with the camera and I am really thankful to all the crew members for being really supportive and helpful. Despite this issue and the stress raised by it we still managed to find some great solutions that we will use further in our practice, for example, when Sara and Marta found a way to replace the TV light with small lights led lights we’ve rented as props. This once again proved to us that the key in learning is experimenting practically, yet, it could save us a lot of time, nerves, and energy if we could actually learn such things during the moving image sessions as I find this kind of knowledge crucial for the production process.

Our final issue for that day was that in the end, we had to shoot a small scene for the dream part with the male crew members in Joe’s apartment, yet some of the actors couldn’t make it due to being tested as positive for covid. Luckily, Bethany’s aunt and uncle came to visit her in the evening and her uncle was really kind to help us play the director.

Below you can see some BTS photos from that day: