Friday the 1st of October was the day of instrumentals. We all gathered at Steph’s place again, and discussed how we would be shooting for the day. I initially thought we’d be spending a large amount of time outside, which is why I got the permit for the 3 streets in Carlton. I initially had written the shooting script, which you can have a look just below, with this in mind, Martin as a character was to be just on his own, in my mind. What I found when we got to Stephs was however, that we could utilise Steph’s pals in the shoot as the 2 other band members, and we could add a level of comedy by adding this character in interaction with his bandmates. This really shows his pretentious side, and gives his character a lot more humorous interactions. I’m quite happy with this, as we were able to come up with many new ideas on the spot, which could really enhance the character to being slightly more complex, yet more funny at the same time.

With this in mind, we set up for the confessional scenes, which for the most part stayed quite the same as in the script, a part from a few new/revised lines which worked better in a natural conversation. Seeing as I had forgotten to charge the battery, I learnt my lesson, so on Friday, that was no longer an issue. I resolved this further by making sure that in between takes and the framing of them, the camera stayed off. Anyway, moving on to something more interesting, we realised that seeing as we had all the band mates together, we would revise the script so that as Martin is giving his story of how the band members meet, we could show how he interacts/treats his band.

A big win with Stephs place was that she had a massive variety of areas we could film in. She had her Hallway/outside/kitchen which we used for Valentina the day before, and she had even more areas to film with for Martin. She had a small table area which we used for filming the confessionals for Martin. It had a really unique look, just like every other room in Steph’s place, and we found that there were props which enhanced the strangeness of the character which we could utilise. For instance, in the background of the confessionals, Martin not only has a stereo player but a sewing machine also in the background. Because why not. We were also able to utilise Steph’s loungeroom, which also had a really distinct and separate  look from all the other scenes. 

It’s fair to say that if we didn’t say anything, you probably wouldn’t notice that over 95ish% (probably inaccurate percentage but anyway) of this filming was done at Steph’s place, and each scene had it’s own distinct look. Finally, we improvised a scene so that instead of filming the entire band in Carlton as the script called for, we could film them in Stephs Back yard area seeing as two of the band members (the ones that aren’t Martin) couldn’t come along to Carlton. Despite this being filmed only about 5 meters away from the confessional, it too, had it’s own distinct look and colour palette. The brick wall even look like it could be on a street somewhere, and that the buskers were warming up for a show in Carlton. Again, Steph’s place was crazy adaptable to almost every purpose we needed it.

Finally, we packed up our gear and headed off to the land of Carlton. We’d filmed many pretty much all of the scenes, car the last page and a bit of the script, and we also improvised some. I found that to be really helpful. We were able to get a lot more insight into the character, and of course the improvising on both our part, and Harry/his bandmates really supplemented the comedic feel and humour. I really think this’ll turn out well. But anyway, in Carlton we quickly filmed Harry playing the recorder, and didn’t bother about marking the takes with slates in etc, seeing as we didn’t want to get beaten up. It turns out a recorder makes a really annoying noise. Even more so on a public street. We did have permission to be there though.

By this point I’d gotten used to the using of my camera, so things were all fairly well framed and in focus. Although, as was with the issue the day before, the sun again was in my eyes in a few shots, which made it difficult to see what was going on on the camera viewfinder. Overall though, I feel like we got a better variety of shots, compared to the day before. don’t get me wrong, we had enough on the Thursday shoot, however seeing as my battery had enough charge, and that we’d all found our stride technically and didn’t need as long to set things up, we were a lot more efficient on Friday.

Another key thing I learnt from Friday is that Harry, our character playing Martin, had a very unique look and style, very different to the character I had envisioned as I was writing it, however he really gave the character a believability and a level of integrity. You feel like you can almost be sucked into what he’s saying, even though most of it is at a pretty high level of idiocy. Overall, he contributed a fun, charming take on the character, he also improvised in some hilarious ways. He really utilized the recorder to great effect, he used it in a way which made it complement the humour of the character, who would honestly believe that his recorder playing skills were something brilliant… Anyway, the point of that tangent was to show that the ideas that he brought were in line with the character, yet it was still quite different to how I imagined it. I feel that if I pictured Harry, who you can see playing his recorder, as Martin it may have changed the style in which I wrote it. I wrote him as less cheery and perhaps less loveable than how Harry portrayed him. But I reckon that can also be a good thing, it gives some variety and I think it’ll seem more realistic, it’s more of a personal performance in that respect when a character isn’t reciting words from a page, but trying to make it relatable.