Directors Unit - Directing My Shoot

Yesterday was the day I directed my short film project. Although there was some stress at times I am very pleased with the way things went. 

Since the schedules were sent out the night before, I liased with the actors to pick them up from the nearby train station around 10:30 am. This worked well and the actors were at the location and ready to shoot by 11. Due to the lighting and the times of when the scenes are set we decided to do the bathroom scenes first with Alessandra. I had gone to the location the night before and set up the lighting to how I wanted it so this was all ready for us to shoot. I gave good direction and got some great footage with this scene. 

We then moved onto the landing and hallway scenes which were a little bit more difficult. The stairs fit tight to the edge of the walls and are narrow when trying to film with equipment. There were only two real options, The top of the stairs and the bottom. I did manage to get a shot on the stairs but it was very impractical so I decided to do the main shots from the other 2 places. 

With the living room this was the one scene I wanted to get right out of all of them. Being a very sensitive and key part to the film I wanted it to be done properly and tastefully. Making sure my actress was comfortable with what we were doing, even tho she had a lot of preparation before hand, we squirted the fake blood mix I made onto the legs and the dress. After a few attempts the blood worked really well and with the shots I took it was done to a standard that worked well and did not look cheap. 

We then moved in the garden doing the running and distress scenes with Oliver. This worked really well but it needed to have more atmosphere. I made the call to use a smoke machine to give a foggy look. This was difficult as the slightest bit of wind would blow the smoke in the wrong direction and we had to do several takes to make sure the full sequence had the surrounding smoke but once it was done I was very pleased with the result.

The final scene we shot was the arguement scene. This was extremely dificult to film mainly due to the tight space we had to work with. After a while we were all losing focus in terms of the continuity and our fustrations were raising. Although I was stressed I made sure I did not show it on the outside and kept calm and collected in order to kept the shoot together and running smoothly. This worked great as everyone pushed through to deliever the results we were looking for. If i could do it differently I would have filmed that scene the next day but I only had a one day window to shoot in terms of cost and avaliability.

Overall it was a great shoot that with time and preparation really came together. I will now edit my footage together and im looking forward to making it into a finished product.