LOL: The shoot

An absolutely exhausting but fantastic couple of days. Really pleased with how the shoot went. We got pretty much everything needed, never falling far behind schedule. Cast and crew were awesome. Workshops ahead of the shoot paid off as we already had a good idea of how to play the key scenes.

I was a little bit anxious prior to the shoot – it had been a while since I’d directed drama. There was a day doing 2nd unit on Starship Intrepid back in May but I’d had very little chance to prep for that. Shoots at uni were quite small crews, so this was my first experience of directing with so many bodies on set. That said, the extra hands made everything go much more smoothly – great having Kingstone and Terri 1st AD’ing Saturday/Sunday.

I’d spent evenings in the last few weeks hanging back at work waiting until the Hollyoaks shoots were over and walking through the sets, visualising and storyboarding the scenes. Time well spent. There were a couple of setups that I had to re-work due to lighting issues but for the most part we were able to stick to the camera plans, giving me more time to work through the scene with the cast.

The shoot days were 8am – 7pm. Pretty easy going, but myself, Kaitlyn, Andy and Jeremy stayed until 11 every night dressing and re-dressing the sets. The set I’d chosen to use as Dawber’s bedroom got re-dressed by the design department a day before the shoot – so we had to change what was now a girls bedroom into a guys, and back again. This involved photographing every inch of the set to make sure we could put it back exactly as it was. We made Dawber’s bedroom as messy as possible by adding heaps of posters, skater gear and smoking paraphernalia. The pizza slices you see on Dawber’s bed are remnants from the Domino’s we ordered the night before. Waste not, want not.

As we’d fallen half an hour behind schedule on day 1, we had to lose a scene where Helen dropped Keely off outside the school gates. With no chance of adding an extra move to day 2, the scene was re-written into a phone call between Jaz, Helen and Keely – and shot around planned locations. The scene was written in the early hours of Sunday morning and finished on the drive to set. Not best practice, but the scene setup an important sequence in the film so was better to have a watered-down version than none at all.

Tasks still on my to do list are to return all the props, take the sound gear back to the hire company in Manchester and get the footage digitised. Won’t be able to relax until I’ve got the footage into Final Cut…