Fiction Adaptation Unit: Production - Day 1

On wednesday I went with Mike to collect my actor and Mark and to get the equipment whilst Ren made her own way to my house.

We got back and set up the equipment. I chose to start with the ward scenes so we prepared the shed that would be the location.

It was kind of daunting to direct as I hadn't done it since our directions unit back in February/March and I felt this pressure as I explained the shot we were going to do.

We managed to get two shots done before it began to rain which was a problem as we had one of the tungsten lights outside whinging into the shed so we moved inside to instead film the Subconscious scenes.

Sophie had a big black blanket which we taped to the outside of the large window in the living room that made the room pitch black. We switched on a tungsten light and it lit up the room very brightly which wasn't what I wanted: I needed a small light shining on the subject as you could see the wall behind them. The location is supposed to be a dark expanse and be seemingly endless.

Instead we grabbed a desk lamp and shone that which made a much better lighting effect, Mike would hold it during takes and Ren would be on sound whilst I directed and pressed record. Mike got a piece of card and rolled it into a cone-like shape and taped it to the lamp head to focus the light and lessen the spill onto the wall behind the subject. Mike's arm started to get tired after a few takes and the stepladder he was stood on would sometimes creak and consequently get picked up on the microphone. So Mike taped the lamp to one of the tungsten light stands which solved both of the problems.

We filmed all of the Subconscious scenes by 5pm and I called it a day on that: my goal was to get all of those done as they cumulated to almost half of the total shots. We finished the day with 36 of 70 shots completed: which I was very pleased with.

I feel the day went well, I was rocky to begin with in terms of directing but I got used to it. Adam did a great job performing his lines and Mark was good also as the Soldier.

My biggest concern is that I will exceed the time limit the film has to be: 3-5 minutes. It seemed like I filmed a lot today and that was proved true when I exported the shot footage and found there were 81 clips! Thankfully the majority were retakes. We pretty much filmed each shot three times.

Thursday would consist of the ward and house shots along with getting a buzz track and a recording of Adam reading the entire script for the voice-over parts of the film.