Major Project - Production Day One

So yesterday was a very exciting, very nerve racking day for me as a director as yesterday was the first day of the production. At 9am the cast and crew started arriving at our base for the day and everyone was excited and raring to go. Hair and makeup got underway and our two actors for the day Tara Dowd and Benedict Smith were slowly transformed from their 2013 selves into their 1942 characters. The goal for the days shooting was to shoot four scenes from the script ending the day with the love montage between characters Mary and Frank which was going to be shot at the 'Salute to the 40's' event at The Chatham Dockyards.

At location number one which was a country road in Loose Village we set about shooting the first scene of the script. It went well getting a range of shots in a range of ways my personal favourite being shooting out of the back of a moving van. But these are the things that we do on low budget film, we have to come up with the best ways to shoot the narrative to make it look like we've spent a lot of money on the production when we haven't.

Unfortunately because hair and makeup took longer than expected as well as shooting in location one took longer than planned when we arrived at location number two which was a hill in East Farleigh I was quite a way behind schedule.Trying to keep calm we started to unload the equipment as we did a man came out from the church hall where we had parked and asked us what we were doing. I explained and rather that telling us to park else where as I had expected he instead he was very friendly. The scene we were about to film saw Frank walking up the hill with his bike. The man saw the bike we intended to use and although it would work for the scene he offered us a genuine 1940s bicycle that he happened to have. It was a very nice gesture and so we took him up on his offer and for the scene we used his bike.

As we began to film the second scene of the day the acting was fantastic I was really impressed with what Tara and Benedict were giving me. Unfortunately I had totally under estimated how much traffic there would be going up and down the hill. Because of this there was a lot of stopping and starting trying to get images without car in the shots. We did eventually get the scene shot but decided as the next scene was meant to be shot in the same location and the traffic caused us to fall further behind I decided that it was in our best interest to move on to the final location of Chatham Dockyards.

Arriving at the Chatham Dockyards we collected our pre arranged press passes and took full advantage of the 1940s event. With the scene being a montage and not knowing what was going to be available for our use I had only a very basic plan knowing that we would improvise. This was my favourite part of the day and we got loads of great footage. Elements at the event meant that I looks like we have had a far larger budget than we had and it made the production value shoot up. For example we came across a couple dressed as 1940s photographers which my First AD talked into being part of the film. Don't they look great!