Shooting the scene with Jenny was very strange. There were a bunch of issues I had with it. I don’t really feel like it worked in the end.

The scene, in a nutshell, is shot from two perspectives. One of them is a mid shot on a video camera, and the other is from a front camera on a smart phone, held by the actor. I was in charge of using the camera. I set up my frame and did several run throughs with Jenny, making sure I had good focus and was able to follow her movement. I really liked the lighting in the scene, and the shadows it cast on her face. When it was time to shoot the scene for real, Alaine came over to the camera, picked it up, and moved it back a few metres. This was apparently where we were shooting from now. I wasn’t pleased with this because it reduced the impact of the shot which I’d set up, and, in a word, looked ugly. There was a lot of clutter in the background now visible which I’d removed by framing Jenny against a solely black background. Anyway – I’m not trying to complain in depth, I just wasn’t happy with the lack of respect for my position.

This leads into my second issue, which is the apparent double standard – since others were flexible in their roles and trying to do my job, I assumed the whole process was collaborative, and so tried to improve Jenny’s acting, as it really wasn’t the best. This wasn’t received because I ‘wasn’t the director.’

I don’t think the shoot went well. This isn’t simply because I didn’t get things my way, but because there were several glaring problems from the get-go that simply weren’t addressed. I can’t imagine the scene being strong in the final product.