Production Day

The day started off with me so nervous that I felt sick. I woke up at 7:00am to set up the kitchen and bedroom to figure out where the lighting would go and the camera. In the end I only used one light in the kitchen and one light in the bedroom (due to being a small area, 2 lights made it too bright for what I was looking for). Unfortunately, for my kitchen scene it created shadow which is something I should think about a lot more on my next project.

At 10:30am, I went to Rochester Station and picked up my actress (Elena), and once we were back at student halls I waited for my other 3 actors who were on time thankfully. Once everyone was there, I offered them refreshments and biscuits and briefly went over the schedule for the day. After I asked Ida (my camera man) to put matte make up on my actors so they don't shine, whilst I took my actress (Elena) and prepared her for her clothing and spoke to her about what I was looking for in Elena. Then I had to take a picture of my actors which was going to be used in my video.

After everything was sorted, we started filming in the kitchen first in case any of my flat mates wanted to use it to cook. It was slightly difficult, figuring out how to place the camera in the middle of the scene where Damon bends down to take Jeremy to Elenas bedroom but because he could not pick him up I needed to make sure he couldn't be seen in the scene. The kitchen scene went smoothly except, I hadn't noticed that you could still see the sun coming from the corners of the curtains which really angered me (cannot believe I didn't notice that before), but it's just prepared me for my next project to look at the little things a lot better. 

The bedroom scene is were it was tricky because it was small.  I had to place my actors and tell them where to stand to make it easy for me not to cross the 180 degree line. But in the end, it still looks like I've crossed it when in reality i didn't. I've attempted to fix that on my video. 

The image quality was great and so was the sound (a thousand times better than my first project). But, as the clip mike was on my actress her voice has come a lot louder than my other two actors, also it was on her bra strap so when ever she moved it made a bit of noise. I'm not worried about this as it can be fixed as the sound is clear.

Over all, it was a great experience being a director. Taking a step back and just focusing on the directing made it a lot easier. I also had great communication with my cameraman which is great as she understood what I wanted. 

At the end, I cooked lunch/dinner for my actors until the three went home and I took my lead actress back to the station. 

The day lasted from 11:00am - 4:00pm.