brighton

House & Garden

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After a long, tiring day filming in the office on Sunday, we kicked off last week on Monday by prepping a house in Seaford. Angela, Nicky and I spent hours arranging furniture and props, getting everything ready for the shoot on Tuesday. We’d noticed that the garden looked stunning in the morning light, so we were hopeful for some great shots outside.

When we arrived on Tuesday it was raining, so we began with the interior scenes featuring Pat Garret and Angela Elise Munnoch. This was the first time both actors appeared in the film, although Angela has been working as the Assistant Director on most of the previous scenes. We certainly missed her AD skills, but both she and Pat gave really strong performances.

After Sunday’s office scenes, I’d assumed the house shoot would be a bit more relaxed and straightforward, especially with only three actors. How wrong was I? Lighting and framing the shots inside the house took far longer, maybe because we were aiming for more emotional depth. By 2pm we were still filming, so we broke for lunch before continuing with the interior scenes.

David Burton had been waiting patiently all day for his debut, but by 5pm we still hadn’t wrapped the interior scenes. So, I made the call to reschedule the garden scenes for another day. We finished up by capturing some nice B-roll of Pat and David strolling through the garden. Angela and I then prepped for a flashback scene with Isabella and Stephanie, both of whom gave excellent performances.

The rest of the week was mostly admin – scheduling and tinkering with Davinci Resolve 20 on my new editing PC. The old Apple screen I’d been using with my previous setup proved to be a bit antiquated, so I ordered a new 34-inch ultra-wide screen. Wow! What a difference! I was a bit concerned about the sound in some scenes, especially the one near Shoreham Port, where the noise from the ships was very noticeable. Plus, we’d been getting a strange crackling from the radio mics on some office recordings. I’ve had some success reducing background noise already, but the port recordings were still truly appalling… until I noticed a new button named “AI voice isolation”. Blimey! It’s like magic!

I also had a play with with colour grading and grabbed a few stills for promotional material. It’s all looking really promising.

Our next shoot is Friday, back at the house, and we’ve got a few days lined up in a flat in Brighton in a couple of weeks time. And we’re also very close to finalising our new Morgan character.

Breaking the Ice

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Last week, we actually made great progress on scheduling, and we now have seven dates in the calendar, including the house scene. Digital props, thanks to Andrew’s help, are now largely under control and should be ready for the relevant scenes. Corporate promotional material has arrived, as have all the components for the editing machine I have the pleasure of building. Yes, yes, all very productive – but the main success of last week was finally breaking the ice on filming.

On Sunday, Angela and Lamb arrived about 1pm and did a great job planning the clothes for Lamb’s scenes. Then off to a car park near Steyning for 4pm to begin the modest task of climbing the South Downs. I’ve done this many times before – it’s hard work but doable, though I don’t think any of us properly considered what it would be like hauling a trolley full of heavy filming kit up there. Turns out: awful.

There were moments when I genuinely started to question the wisdom of our location choice. But largely thanks to Morgan and Andrew (with some help from me and Angela), we made it to the top. To be fair, the view was stunning. So yes, we did the right thing.

We spent about three hours filming up there, during which time the actors wore a visible groove in the grass with all the walking.

Then, about 7pm, we headed down into Steyning for some more filming along a lane at the base of the Downs, just as the sun was dropping low and throwing some great light through the trees. Genuinely beautiful – I think we have some fantastic shots.

We paused in a car park for refreshments while we waited for darkness to fall. Steyning, as it turns out, is exceptionally well-stocked with car parks. With five cars between us, we did a lot of pausing in them, which quickly became a running joke.

As the street lights started coming on, we resumed filming in the town itself, finishing inevitably in yet another car park around midnight. By that point, I was thoroughly exhausted and I assume everyone else was too.

I could’ve done with Monday off, obviously, but we’d already planned another shoot in Shoreham. At 9:30am, we went with a minimal cast and crew – just me, Lamb and Keaton to shoot a short scene near the port. One thing we’ve learned, which should’ve been bleeding obvious months ago, is that ports are extremely noisy places. Bloody ships’ engines, reversing alarms, beeping forklifts, and what sounded suspiciously like a pneumatic drill decorated our audio recordings.

Since then, I’ve downloaded the footage onto my laptop and had a quick go at the sound. Some of it might be salvageable, but I’ll need to wait until my fantastic new mega PC is up and running to properly clean it up.

In other news, we’ve got another shoot lined up for Saturday. Should be easier – allegedly. Though let’s be honest, we’ll probably just swap hills and shipping containers with some pettifogging office irritants (POIs). Watch this space.

The main objective this week is to get all props, digital and physical, ready for Saturday and to prep the office environment, which until recently, has been used as a storage area.

Sunday was hard work, but it felt fantastic to finally stop talking about filming and actually do some. I think it was especially valuable for the two lead actors – they’re really beginning to settle into their characters now.

Early night tonight.