This week OPERATION SUPERSTAR (2024) began production. After two weeks of preparation, we had a lot of goals that we wanted to hit on day one of shooting. Our shot list was long but we made room for things to go wrong and to be flexible with other people that we were working with. 

On the day of the shoot, we spent class sorting out any final details and having one last debrief. Alex and I also set out to create a diffuser lens that we had planned to do since the beginning. We settled on the picture shown, which is some frosted wrapped with tape that after some experimentation we found clouds the image in an almost vignette and ‘astigmatises’ light adding the dream-like look we wanted certain parts of the film to have. 

When shooting a lot of things went well. We had most of the shots we wanted and had another night to get the ones that we didn’t since we started early. Our actors worked very well together and got more and more comfortable as the night went on. Even though everyone did their jobs perfectly the amount of stress that a shoot like that causes, always makes you feel like everything went wrong even though it didn’t. Towards the end of the night, the people of the public began to turn on us and we were quickly chased out of Fitzroy as we wrapped up our final shot. 

Alex and I reviewed some of the footage in an edit suite as we transferred across the footage and all the doubts of the previous night fleeted and we were reminded that it did in fact look good and we had a lot that we were able to work with. 

Moving forward to the next shoot on Sunday, we all know exactly what we want to do and every step we take closer to our final product feels more and more fulfilling.