Major Project Production Unit - Shoot Day: The Who'd A Thought It

Since this is a reshoot I already had a good idea of how I am going to do the scenes that we needed to shoot this day. I had sent call sheets to everyone a few days before to ensure that everyone knew what time to arrive as well as a schedule break down of what we were doing on the day. Being producer, I also had to ensure there were no schedule conflicts and that the date coincided with everyones availability.

Since this was an afternoon shoot, this allowed my self and Andreya to go down to the location in the morning and set up in the room we are using. We arrived at 8am and set up all the equipment ensuring everything was working and in place. I also wanted to use the track for these scenes to continue with fludity and movement of shots. Once everything was set up I went through my blocking and shot list to ensure I knew what I was doing in each scene and that the lighting all worked. I had a few issues with mirrors and this was meant to be an upstairs bedroom however the room was on the ground floor so I had to ensure there were no shots showing outside which took some minor reconfigurations. Happy with how everything was looking, we decided to break for lunch and then pick up Claudia our actress and take her back to my house. Its there she would be able to do her hair and make up and then get changed into her costume before heading to the shoot.

Once we got to the shoot I went through all of the blocking with Claudia showing her where I wanted to stand at certain points as well as where the camera will be on each shot and the type of performance I wanted her to deliver. This took a little bit of time as I wanted to ensure she was completly confident in what she was doing. After this, Karen and Fiona, our other actresses, arrived at the shoot and I was able to do the same with them. I also went through some rehearsal scenes with them all as these were shots where they were going to be interacting with eachother so I felt it was important that they got that right.

After the rhearsals, we were ready to begin shooting. The first scene we did was the wardrobe scene. This is where Fiona was hiding in the wardrobe and claudia discovers her. I wanted these scenes to be long and drawn out to build tension so I used the track and dolly to slowly move forwards towards the wardrobe as you hear fiona crying. This I feel worked really well. Next we shot Claudia walking towards the wardrobe with the iron. I feel this works really well and I wanted to focus on claudia expression as you heard the crying in the background. She looks unphased and quite happy which really heightens a different side of her character and makes her look psychotic. We ran through this scene a couple of times with a few different angles as I wanted to ensure we had enough to work with in the edit in terms of cuts. Once this was done we then filmed the scenes where Karen was dead on the floor. I was a little bit unsure about how this bit looked. Although I specificallly did not want there to be blood as this is meant to be a dream sequence, it felt staged and unnatural with Karen laying on the floor but I feel with the right editing the scene could work. I wanted a few takes and different types of movements to ensure we had the best chance with making the shot work. We then moved onto the scenes where Sophie comes in and hits Lorna over the head with an iron. I decided to go with what we had done last time as after reviewing the shots, I feel it works really well. Claudia would approach Karen slowly before leaping towards her and prentending to strike. I then wanted  different shot where Sophie hits Lorna so I made it low angle pointing upwards and quite tight replacing karen with pillows so that when Sophie strikes it looks like shes hitting Karen but she isnt. My goal is to get the right cut between the shots in the edit so it looks authentic and realistic.

Finally we moved onto the dialogue scene. This was the most challenging as I wanted the performances to be spot on and not cheesy. I wanted to do over the shoulder shots as well as a close up of Claudia, a close up of Karen, mid shots of them individually as well as a long shot of them both. I decided to get this scene as good as I could get. I would run the whole scene atleast 6 times for each shot to enable the flow and motion between shots to be right. This took up a lot of time and it was really tight towards the end but overall I am really happy with how these turned out.

Overall I am pleased with this reshoot. After seeing the footage I am really glad we did this. I feel the shots are a lot more elevated compared to the last ones and the whole scene flows really well. The room decor is a lot brighter, cleaner and more elegant than the last but It also matched with the other locations so in the edit it should all come together as one house. Im really pleased with how this all went and I cant wait to see how it all fits in the edit.