the system

Shirts, Scheduling (AGAIN!!!) and a Drone

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Last week, I tried—and failed—to schedule the remaining shoot days. We’ve got one day for some street scenes, two days in a friend’s flat and one very quick scene with the truck. Scheduling might sound straightforward, but everyone communicates via different channels. Most people use WhatsApp and email, but I’m also contending with telephone calls, texts and yes, even snail mail. Pick the wrong channel and all you get is silence. I thought I’d sorted the truck scene, had all four actors on board, but alas, the truck wasn’t available. Hey ho.

On a more positive note, I’ve started being more systematic about prepping media. I’ve set up a spreadsheet with columns for audio received, video received, media filed, media synced and so on. Going through it made me realise I’m missing the video from the petrol station shoot, as well as audio for several days. A few panicked calls to the DOP and sound team quickly reassured me—they do have the media; I just need to collect it.

In other good news, a friend spotted an article about Automatic in the local paper, The Argus. Huge thanks to Julie Russell, who’s been doing PR for Automatic and sent a press release to The Argus some time ago.

I also finished the submission for the film on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) and was delighted to see the entry go live within a day.

We did manage a very short shoot last week. I’d put out an advert for a flat in a block for a quick scene, and luckily, a friend replied. I scheduled it for Saturday. I also needed to capture one quick shot we’d missed on the original shoot day in my flat. So Saturday found me back in my spare room, repositioning lights, furniture and a couple of shirts to recreate the exact look of the earlier shoot. Stuart and I polished that shot off pretty quickly, then we picked up Alistair and headed over to Newhaven for another short scene, including a drone shot that Alistair handled admirably despite a stiff breeze.

This coming week, I’ll continue prepping media and getting the remaining shoot days scheduled (hopefully!).

Gimbal & Final Office Scenes

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I have become increasingly aware of an issue with one of the external scenes we shot back in July and have started planning some external B-roll to fix it. One obvious but hard-learnt lesson from making this film has been the importance of getting external scenes wrapped before the seasons change. In an effort to fix a problem I want to shoot some B-Roll consisting of a moving point-of-view (POV) shot at the same location as before. The trees look a little different now, but I think I’ll get away with it. The shot doesn’t need any actors but will involve a gimbal.

For those unfamiliar, a gimbal is a stabilisation device that lets you shoot handheld footage without the camera shaking. A better description might be: three absurd L-shaped chunks of metal, about a foot long, attached with hinges that, at the slightest touch, start to whirl around like an epileptic robot. I’ve rarely used mine since buying it a few years ago, and just working out how the various “plates” attach to the camera was tricky enough. Then there’s the problem of figuring out what all the bloody settings mean. So, Monday found me downloading the manual.

My other task, after a relatively quiet couple of weeks, was prepping for a shoot on Saturday back in the EC offices in Kemptown. It’s becoming a bit of a running joke that I tell people that the day should be simpler because of this, that and the other – but shooting days never seem to be simple.

One major responsibility on office shoot days is preparing the space, then restoring it to its previous condition for the office workers on Monday morning. I’ve been lucky to have Andrew’s help with this; he takes photos of the offices when we arrive, quietly and calmly moves stuff out of shot, then puts it all back again later.

Saturday’s scenes were in four different locations. In discussion with Angela, we decided to be more disciplined about timing, so I laid out a detailed plan, including the cast and crew moving through the various scenes, while Andrew prepped the offices in advance and then reset them as we shot.

We had four main scenes, one of which marked Christina Dembenezi‘s debut. I’d also added a short extra scene for her, which required another actor, and I wanted to capture various B-roll shots to help with scene transitions. By Thursday, one of the actors had told me they couldn’t make the shoot on Saturday, so by midweek I was sending out requests for replacements. We were lucky enough to get Meghan Adara, who stars in The Cellar by Jamie Langlands, as well as Hazel Stock.

All the cast delivered excellent performances, which was especially impressive since it was Christina, Meghan and Hazel’s first scenes for the film. We had a lot of fun and finished shooting on time. Once again, many thanks to Mark Tournoff and Gosia Stewart of EC Brighton.