Location Reccy

19th March 2013

The entire shoot for our short film will be at Pearse's house so we didn't necessarily have to do a location reccy but we thought it was important for both directors to go around the house in person, instead of just one.

We walked around the house with both our script and shot list and played out the shoots that we wanted while seeking out any problems that may occur during filming on both days. We wrote own the problems and then at the end of going around the house; we sat down and figured out how we would solve each problem.

We didn't encounter too many, but one example would be reflective pictures. There is a framed painting in the living room and if the camera man were to stand in and have the camera shooting, depending on what angle they were shooting at, you may be able to see their (the camera person's) reflection in the painting through the camera. As we walked through the shots however, we realized that we can still have the camera person in that same position but the camera doesn't need to be held so high up; therefore we won't see the camera person's reflection in the painting.

Production Meeting: Four

14th March 2013

Last Friday, both our actors; James and Caroline, were confirmed for the roles of Charlie and Ellen, and we're very excited to work with them!

The first day of the schedule is prepared and completed; there are only four scenes in the film so three will be done on the first day with one scene being done on the second day. If we run over time on the first day however, we will finish shooting the remaining scenes on the second day. The second day schedule is being slightly tweaked but is almost completed.

The equipment that we need to loan out for shooting, was booked on Tuesday morning. We still need to get the actors to sign release forms, but we will be arranging to do this soon.

Production Meeting: Three

7th March 2013

On Monday (4th March), we held our casting call and were very pleased with everyone who showed up. Pearse and I went over the footage that we shot from the auditions, and based our decisions on that.

The script was blocked out further and we went over it twice to make sure we wrote down everything we needed to get, or just in case we missed something out. Our shot list was completed too, but we still need to add some panning shots as well as our stationary shots that we have written down.

Casting Call for "Moving On"

4th March 2013

Our casting call was a success! Out of seven people that were interested, three came to the audition and they were all fantastic! We were really impressed with how the casting call went and how all three were so nice and really up for playing the roles.

We had chosen two separate extracts from the script for the actors to play out while either Pearse or myself said the other lines back to them. This was done after they read our monologues out for us.

We told the actors that as soon as we made our decision, we would text them and let them know.

Production Meeting: Two.

28th February 2013

Throughout the week we had sent out some online advertisements for the two roles that we were casting. We advertised on Gumtree and Twitter, and were overwhelmed with how many people were interested in auditioning for the film.

Seven people got in contact with us during the week and on the 28th, we sat down and discussed when we should have a casting call so we could see the actors and how they would perform the script in front of us. We also agreed that Pearse would type up a short monologue for the son, and I would type up a short monologue for the mother character.

During this meeting, Pearse emailed the head of the HND Performing Arts department in the college as well as making a start on the shot list. We will be using Pearse's house for the shoot, and because we only have to use the kitchen, bedroom, hall way and a living room; we can stay in the house for the entirety of shooting and not need to travel to a number of locations throughout filming.

Before the meeting ended, we decided to have the casting call on Monday 4th March at 2pm; we didn't give the actors specific times, we just stated that auditions started at 2pm to make it easier for anyone if they were able to come early or if they were running a little late.

Our First Production Meeting.

21st February 2013

After the decision had been made on what scripts would be chosen, we got into pairs and we became our own production teams. Pearse McKeown and I decided to group up together, and we had our first production meeting.

In this meeting, we discussed the characters that were in the script and what type of people we would be looking for. The script, called "Moving On", stars only two characters; a young male aged around sixteen to eighteen and an older woman old enough to be the teenage boy's mother.

We went through and did a script breakdown, and in this breakdown we wrote down the following:

• The locations we would be needing.
• The props needed in all scenes.
• Crew members we would need.
• If we needed contracts and what type.
• A quick schedule draw up.
• The equipment we would be loaning out.
• Our thoughts on what we would do for catering. 

Before we ended the meeting, we made sure we had the email addresses as well as the mobile numbers of everyone in our team, in case we needed to come in contact with them.

Simple Introduction.

I have created this blog to document our journey throughout the pre-production, shooting stage and post production experience of our first short film, "Moving On", for one of our HND classes.