Week 11, the big one. For this week, we had planned two full days of shooting on Monday and Tuesday, and starting the assembly cut on Wednesday once we had finished all of our filming. 

Day 1 of shooting was a slow start, trying to sort out how to build the set, actors and some crew running slightly late and trying to stay on time with the call sheet. It hindsight, it would have been better to pre-plan how we would build the set instead of just having a general idea, as we discovered that there was a possibility of another studio needing the same equipment as us. Fortunately, we negotiated on what we could take from the prop room, and built our “sitcom set” in around 30 minutes, which I thought was pretty damn impressive.

 

Despite the slow start to day 1, once we got started it went pretty smoothly. I would’ve loved to have a bigger studio/bigger set to make it more realistic but we had to work with the tools we were given, and I think for a short film with a non-existent budget and only 6 weeks to finish it, we did well.

Day 2 was a much easier filming day, as we had a location organised, and we only needed our camera, sound and lighting equipment. Nia had already finished the call sheet for day 2 as well, which helped ensure that everything ran smoothly and we would be right to finish on time. For day 2, we had to conduct interviews of the actors, but the black background we had originally used did not match exactly, which may be a job for me in post whilst editing. Given I was sorting out the lighting and directing that day, I probably should’ve quadruple-checked that things aligned. 

Once the two days were wrapped, we began editing, which is where our use of continuity sheets saved us as without them, we would have spent hours combing through everything. The basic assembly cut took a while to finish off, but now that it is more organised, we should have a much easier run to the finish line.