Shoot day. Muchkin alarm clock goes off late but that's cool as we have plenty of time to enjoy M's muffins and a bracing morning beverage before B & B arrive. Showers and brekkie later and it's out to the studio. Br arrives and we chat about what we're going to be doing that day (or, at least, my guess as to what we'll be doing). One thing's for sure, there's no real point in having a schedule today, just a finish time in mind and that's going to be a rough estimation! Bo gets here and we start experimenting with the camera setups. Cut a long story short, by about 4pm(!!) we're ready to go with cameras and lights in the right place. It was a close run thing whether or not to ditch the second camera in favour of the set being effectively lit from one side with only one subject. BUT, we held out and we hung some 8x12' white painters covers on the walls to hide the shadowy corners and we were back to two cameras! I was finally happy with the look so off we went, starting with dirty singles. Clean singles and close ups later, we had arrived at about 8pm without stopping for lunch or dinner. I wanted to run everything at least twice but I ended up settling for one run of close ups and fill in close ups, ditto clean singles.
We had rolling snacks, drinks and pee breaks. The guys were starting to make noises about pushing to a second day but I had to tell them that we couldn't. I convinced them that the last few shots (I lied, there were several more shots to do) were only going to take a couple of hours. We carried on and shot some wides including the 'plates' for the clipboard 'appearance) as well as for cutaway thinking, pondering, looking and reaction shots, hopefully to add some more elements into the edit.
Over shoulder shots, the opening shot of B's arrival and a couple of other specials, we came to the last 'desk' shot which had our third character (who's never seen, by the way) coming upto the desk. I knew that I wanted a POV shot but wasn't happy with a handheld. Inspiration struck when R saw monkey's Radio Flyer truck and suggested we try a dolly shot! Superb. Camera on tripod inside wagon and we were ready. B attended to the camera (as all good DP's should), G on sound with the boom, R on the floor ready to pull stuff out of the way (when it was out of frame) and me steering! It worked like a charm. My little film had a friggin' dolly shot in it! And a corker it was! Lo-budget filmmaking, I love it. Actually, suggestions abounded all day which was refreshing as we had an amazing camaraderie on set which was probably helped by the fact that there was only five of us in total and happy banter with good natured insults (lots of bitch and c'sucker were uttered) abounded. Desk shots done, it was time for the overhead shot. I would have loved to have got to it before 10pm but we didn't! Arranged the covers on the floor and B hit the deck. I went up the ladder with camera in hand. Looking down, it was wild! The shot worked amazingly well and it's going to blow people's minds when they see it. What an opener! All done. Cold food waiting in the kitchen and we watched some of the footage on the TV. Holy moley, it looks incredible. EXACTLY the look I wanted. Everyone thought I was completely mad as all that you could see in the monitor was zebra stripes everywhere but I stuck to my guns. But even G said 'bastard, this is good' which is an amazing compliment from G and made me very proud! Then Bo & Br hit the road. Br had had a lot to cope with and I was really pleased with his performance. He did really well. Actually, everyone worked like stink and worked a VERY long day although I think this shoot was still a good 8 hours less than some of the one dayer's I had heard about. Basically setup and shoot was 14 hours and thank god I did eventually use two cameras as I had wanted - we saved ourselves a whole day! Here's a tip, if you can get two cameras for your shoot, get them. Seriously, it's worth the hassle. Also, what turned out to be incredibly important to do was to check the footage on an external TV monitor. We didn't trust the camera's display. It turned out to be SO different and as we were pushing video limits, we went for a belt and braces approach. Thank god we did check, early on, with different setups as it completely saved our bacon. We could have so easily lost the whole day's shoot by filming what would have turned out to be useless. Anyway, G & R stayed until 2.30am clearing up and I hit the sack at 4am.