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Production

Process, management and communication

Production Journal

Below is my production journal. We filmed over 4 days, mostly at night. This journal outlines the positives and negatives of the production, the failures and the general process.

 

Day 1: INT. – BAR – NIGHT

On the first day we started getting things ready at 9:30am as we were expecting extras by 11am. A major issue I had prior to my production was that I had about 7 of my planned extras drop out very last minute. This put a spanner in the works, as it made it really difficult to recreate a bar scene with such a small group of people.

To add on to the problem, the extras were all a few hours late. Due to this factor, we decided to film the first scene of the boys at the table before filming the general crowd shots. This shot took longer than expected as we wanted to perfect the lighting system. Eventually we decided to set up one big LED light, and one smaller LED. The bigger Studio LED gave more light on the boys, meaning the footage was less grainy, and the smaller LED I used as a backlight.

It was very difficult to get the perfect images I had planned, as it was very dark in the bar and the house lights were on dimmers. When looking over the footage later, I realised that a lot of the footage was out of focus due to the poor lighting, and there was a lot of grain as the camera had been at a very high ISO.

Another problem I faced was with the equipment. I had never used a gimbal prior to the filming (to be honest, I didn’t know it existed) and therefore we failed to set it up on the first day of production. I also came across the problem, that 2 out of 3 of the large studio LED lights didn’t work when we plugged them in. Luckily on the last try, I managed to set up the light, and dim it while also using a gel to give it a red glow. I also came across problems with the battery of the camera (as I only had 1). This didn’t give us much of an issue as we paused for lunch as the battery charged.

Although there were many problems, it was expected and nothing bad enough to change the whole project. There were, of course, many positive aspects. Firstly, my good friend Lucinda took the role of audio, and after listening to the first day of recording, I asked her to complete it for the rest of the production.

Another great thing was that JK (Costa) and Vera (Essie) had great chemistry. They had never met each other, and there is quite a large age gap, yet they were comfortable with one another and worked well throughout the production.

Some shots deemed very difficult to achieve. For example, Essie walking towards the table was very difficult to capture as we tried to get it all in one shot. Eventually we decided to get 2 angles in order to showcase what was going on properly. It was also difficult to get done properly because the bar is quite small.

If I had another shot at day 1, I would’ve gotten the extras out as soon as I could and shot with them over 2 days. I would’ve also payed for more lunch!

The best part of the day was the fact that we had access to high quality speakers, so during the periods where we weren’t filming, my friend DJ’d for us.

I made a few changes to the production. I cut down on how many shots I would take, as I realised that longer tracking shots were a lot better and went more with the neo-noir themes and conventions I am going for. I also decided to change the music I was going to use in the club. Initially I had foreseen to use a song by ‘La Femme’ called ‘S.S.D.’ but it wasn’t a great pick because there is a lot of dialogue, and it distracts from what is going on in the scene.

I also changed the production name from ‘Under the Pavement’ to ‘Red Betty’ as I think it would be a great homage to the bar we filmed in.

Lastly, we finished quite late on Monday so I decided to post-pone the alley scene to the second day.

Day 2: -EXT. – ALLEY – NIGHT

The night before this shooting, I re-watched clips from train-spotting, and this inspired how I wanted to shoot the alley way scene. I asked JK and Vera to watch this clip and from there we blocked it out in the alley.

The second day was a lot more smooth.

Before filming I contacted the local police station to tell them that we were going to be filming a violent scene in the alley – no problem there.

We all met at 5pm at Red Betty, and while waiting for it to get dark, we decided to get some B-roll inside. This was really easy to do due to the fact that I figured out how to use the Gimbal during the day before filming.

The only difficulty with the b-roll was the fact that many of the lights were creating strobe effects in the camera. This was easily fixed by changing the FPS.

To set up lighting outside, it was difficult but doable. It was very helpful as there is a building next to the bar that emits quite a lot of light into the alley at night. We also brought along our own extension cords and had the small LED light fully charged. The only problem with this lighting setup was that we were blocking the alley, and from about 6pm – 8pm we had to keep moving the light and chords out of the way so that cars could get through.

I also made sure that there was a person dedicated to keep an eye on the equipment in the alley at all times.

We decided to change the script and story board around quite a bit, and cut down on many of the shots so that in the end we opted for a large range of tracking shots instead of quick cuts. I also altered the blocking so that JK didn’t have to vomit on himself and Vera, instead leaning over and doing it on the ground.

The blocking was very easy to do for this scene, as I was taking a lot of inspiration off Trainspotting, and I asked for the actors to watch a clip before production. I took about 20 takes of Vera and JK in order to get the perfect one (of which I believe we got).

Another thing is that we filmed all of Mason’s scenes (Liam) before everything else as he was on a tight train schedule. He finished around 8pm.

The only other major problem on Tuesday night was the battery (again!). Seeing as we were still at the bar, we charged it while eating dinner (which I provided).

All in all, it was a great production night. We wrapped quite late (Around 12am) but it was worth it!

Day 3: EXT. -UNDERPASS – NIGHT

On the third day, I got quite sick with a cold and so the night of shooting was difficult to get through.

Apart from me being sick, we had various positive aspects. Firstly, the underpass was lit really well and looked great on screen. We therefore took HEAPS of footage of JK (Costa) walking down and looking at the walls.

I also got a lot of B-Roll footage of the walls, but looking at them after was a bit disappointing as they didn’t come out very well. This gives me a huge job in Post-Production so that I make the scene dark and creepy through the use of editing and sound instead of completely reliant on visuals.

I showed the Metro office my permit to film in the underpass, but was questioned for a while by the PSO’s. They ended up being more interested in the production than telling us off.

The writing on the wall was done in chalk, and looked great in real-life but didn’t come out that well on camera. This will be fixed later!

We also had a problem with pedestrains, as we were using such a public space it was expected for there to be many people getting past. This post-poned us a bit but we managed to get through it by placing someone at each entrance to the underpass and asking them to tell us if anyone was coming. They also asked people if they could wait for 2 minutes while we filmed.

To get around this we also kept an eye on train times and took note of when there would be a lot of people trying to get past.

Before filming, we called up the cops again to ask if it was okay if we filmed outside the Northcote Station. They had no problem with this, and we travelled there after the underpass.

Finally, we took the last shots outside a shop on High Street. These were improvised and I gave JK (Costa) some lines as inspiration for what he could say. These shots didn’t work out well, as they were grainy and the audio was bad. We got around this problem by planning to re-shoot that part the next night.

Day 4: -EXT. TRAIN STATION – NIGHT

This was the final night of filming, and we were all happy it was coming to an end but also sad because we had all had such a good time.

Vera decided to join us again to see how it ended, but Lucinda wasn’t able to come so I got my friend Nina to help with audio.

We only had the last scene left to film, which is short and quite simple. After showing my permit to the Metro office and warning the PSO officers, we began filming at around 6pm.

The first big problem was that Lara (Al) has never acted before, and it was difficult to give her directions and for her to listen to them properly. Pairing her with Oscar (the man) was helpful, as he has acted a lot and was able to help her become more convincing.

After altering her performance, the filming went smoothly. We had some people at the station give us some advice, and even a man who acted out a whole scene for us.

The main annoyance on Thursday was that trains were arriving regularly. I fixed this by filming in-between times and relying on Nina to tell me the schedule.

Again, the footage was slightly grainy when I looked over it again, but I wasn’t able to do much about it as JK was leaving early the next morning.

I am happy because we got to re-shoot the cat calling scene at a really cool place I drove past. It added to the motif exceptionally well, as it has red and blue lighting. I asked JK to improvise this section, whilst giving him a general outline of what to say. He pulled it off exceptionally.

Overall, it was a great last production day and we wrapped around 10pm and celebrated.

  

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AMENDMENTS TO PRODUCTION:

After sorting through footage and audio, and once I had edited a full first copy of my film, I realised I needed to do some re-recording of audio.

I met up with Lara, and we recorded the phone conversation again as the feedback I received from others said it wasn’t believable.

I also asked JK to send me audio files of him whispering, but it took a long time to get a hold of these as he was very busy.