So today, we had our first day of filming and it was actually pretty good.

We had a fairly early call time to allow us enough time to set up all the equipment before the actors arrived. But to say that we were cool, calm and collected would’ve been a great joke but probably not at the time.

I definitely think we were all feeling some first-day-at-a-new-job jitters. Scripts and shooting lists were still getting printed, equipment were still getting picked up, and setting up the room took a little longer with only a couple of people to help (but also because the classroom we were filming in had way too many chairs than necessary). But overall, it was still a successful day of filming and we finished way earlier than planned. And I guess that was something that made us re-evaluate how we were actually doing during our early lunch break.

We knew that it usually takes a little longer than a couple of hours to film an entire scene in a professional set. And we managed to film all of the first scene of the first episode within a couple of hours. It was a fairly big scene in terms of the amount of shots we had planned, and there were also a number of camera set ups we had to do. So by the time we had our break, we needed to discuss what else we could possibly film seeing as though we have filmed everything we had planned to for the day. We ended up adding a couple more shots in different angles to this first scene seeing as though we had a lot of medium to close up shots.

Overall, the day went fairly smoothly with some minor things that we could improve on for the future filming days we have coming up. Something that stuck with me from the pilot presentations was the feedback about knowing what your role is and knowing when it’s your place to say something or bite your tongue. So for me, as the cinematographer, when I saw something that was off in the frame, I would say it to the director or first AD quietly and they can make that change by giving direction to the actors or crew. But again, because it was our first day and we were still basically testing the waters of production as a group, this passed our minds in the beginning and people would be speaking at the same time or giving direction to actors when the director should be the only one doing that.

But of course, learning from our pilot, we picked up on it and made sure to avoid doing that so we don’t confuse the actors and also each other. It’s really great that we all notice different things and have so many suggestions. We just need to ensure that we’re as professional as we can be and making sure we run the idea by the director or first AD on set and just really stick to our roles.