We’ve been getting our actors in as much as we can, shooting outdoor scenes right up until it’s no longer daylight. We’ve had to reshoot some scenes with equipment failures. But we’re getting a system down, we know what to rent, how to work with a two person crew (getting to set EARLY and setting up interior and exterior scenes so as to move easily indoors when we run out of light and immediately begin shooting). We know what we have left to film, but like every project, there are unforeseen events that can mean loosing a critical day or scene. As we move through November I’m starting to understand exactly what we need to do in order for this film to come together. Although winter has held off, due to actors and our schedules, it is only possible to shoot on the weekends. This means the landscape can change drastically and we’ll jus have to deal with it.
I think it might come down to rewriting some scenes to take place indoors. Once we began shooting I realized how many scenes and locations we had.
However, the more we shoot this film, the more it makes sense for me and the better we get at being efficient and effective with shooting. Our actors have applauded us with how professional we’ve been and how prepared we always are. They have acted in student projects before and they all say they’ve had to also work as crew or help out in some way or another. We also lucked out in that our actors know each other well and are quite good friends with one another, which makes down time when shots are being set up much easier for them. We all get along really well and there have been times where our actors realized that we’ve already wrapped but they’ve been hanging out with us for an hour or so.
This is definitely one of the more challenging projects I’ve had but I’m putting in everything I’ve learned from past projects and I think it will pay off in the end.
