Filming for Milk Run began this week, starting with on-street filming in Fitzroy North on Monday. We got through a scene, which has since been redone, but it gave us a feel for the equipment as we hadn’t had much practice as a group beforehand. Legend Daniel borrowed the equipment, and we settled on using a Zoom H4n to record as the only Zoom F8 available was broken. I think this worked in our favour, as we were filming outdoors and, being on sound, it was easier to use a handheld recorder that I was familiar with. I was worried that relying on lav mics would leave us with dodgy audio, especially for the outdoor scenes, so I ditched them all together and used a shotgun mic attached to a boom pole. This felt like the best way to monitor the audio, but in hindsight, it would have been best to just use both as I could have always layered the audio later in the mix.
Being a large group with other commitments, we weren’t all available for the full shoot on Wednesday. I had a backup who was comfortable doing sound cover me for the morning shoot, so it will be interesting to listen to all the files and work out what’s what. I joined the crew in the afternoon, where we began setting up for our indoor scenes. It was good fun seeing our characters come to life, and hearing the lines we deliberated over delivered as comically as intended, which was super rewarding.
On Sunday, we’ll begin our café and convenience store shoot in Edithvale. Quite the journey for myself and many others, coming from the northern suburbs, but it’s clear we’re committed to this short film and want to be able to put together a project we’re proud of, as we said from the get-go. Monday will likely be our last shoot day in Edithvale, and I’ll be working with Daniel on the edit to polish off the audio mixing. I’m a tad worried about running behind schedule, but I think we’ll push through and give ourselves enough time to work on the edit.