I believe that this is what is called ‘crunch time’. The last few days have been busy trying to slot everything in place at the last minute, as you have to on a shoot. We’ve gotten our (not £200) harddrives delivered, I’m making lists of things that I need to have on set (pieces of …
The Countdown: Five Days Until We Shoot
It’s Monday already? Gosh, where did last week go? We’ve been busy in the ‘With A Little Help From Our Friends’ production office (and by that, I mean we’re all working out of our respective bedrooms) and suddenly we’re five days out from shooting. This week is out last chance to get everything in place …
Of Learning Lines and an Abundance of Laughter: First Rehearsal
Sunday morning dawned chilly and frosty but it didn’t deter me – it was our first rehearsal day for With A Little Help From Our Friends. First rehearsals are pretty special things. You get the cast coming together for the first time. You often get the main heads of department showing up as well to …
Pre-Production: Cast List
Auditions are done. Tough decisions have to be made. In this particular film, it is vital that the comradery between the actors is right, that they all look compatible as best friends, that they all look right on screen together. Don’t ask me what right looks like because it’s different for every filmmaker. This film …
Updates!
Sorry for the radio silence over the past two weeks, but I’m back and ready to go! A quick update on where we’re at with the film: We’ve had to shift the shoot date by two weeks, due to a couple of little things popping up, so we are now not shooting until November. This …
Swapping, Changing, Compromising – Locations
Taking a break from talking about auditions and casting (although we’re nearly done there, I promise!), I thought I’d let you guys know what’s been happening with organising locations. About a month ago, I blogged about how we had managed to find a location but were still locking in dates. After casting, one of the …
Pre-Production: Auditions Part 04
More in the auditions saga (A Cautionary Tale, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). Where you hold your auditions is also important. You want somewhere that has enough space for the actors not to feel inhibited but, as it’s for a low/no budget film, you don’t want to have too much physical space between you …
Pre-Production: Auditions Part 02
You’ve got your script. You’ve conned someone into being your producer. You’re starting to get the locations together, you’re thinking about what camera you’re going to shoot on but you need one of the most important departments of filmmaking sorted before you move too much further forward. The actors. Without actors, you don’t have much …
Pre-Production: Auditions – Part 01
I am delighted to report that regardless of any qualms or nerves expressed in previous posts, the auditions for With A Little Help From Our Friends went mind-blowingly well. I’ll break down the process during the week, but in summary (at the beginning, I know, it’s a bit weird) we had: – Roughly 100 applications …
Pre-Production: Organising Auditions; A Cautionary Tale
Operation: Playstation This week has been entirely flat out for me. Not only did we lose a day to a three day weekend (trust me, I am not complaining about that in the slightest!), but my ‘normal’ nine-to-five job has kicked up a notch in the past two weeks and it’s all go go go …