ACROSS THE POND

Across the Pond

When I first arrived on the the project had already been in production for two weeks so the majority of the cast and crew knew one another and knew their job roles for the project. When I first got there everyone was waiting for a production meeting to start and I found it a good opportunity to chat with a few crew-members to find out their roles, their previous experiences and just generally getting to know them. I found sitting in on the production meeting to be quite interesting, all though I was unsure of what my job role would be in the project it was really good to hear how the project was coming along, problems they had encountered, how they tried to resolve these problems and also what the next task was.

The first location we were all at was ‘The House’ filming interior and exterior shots. Javier gave me the role as ‘Stills Photographer’. My role involved taking photos of both the cast and crew in action to get some behind the scenes photos.





The first scene being filmed was outside on the drive. Whilst the crew were filming this scene they had a few lighting issues. The scene was being filmed early in the afternoon on quite a dull day, this was causing a few problems because the shot was fairly dark and the trees were blocking the sunlight. This problem had to be resolved quickly before the sunlight was gone completely; this meant slightly altering the arrangement of the shot and making the use of some big reflector boards. This shot took a few hours to get right and to be honest I was so glad once they had it because that meant we could move onto the next scene which was inside away from the cold!

The next scene was taking place in the hallway and this required a fair amount of lighting. Once the set was all ready Brendan and Javier had a brief discussion of the best way to shoot the next scene and got straight to work. The schedule was slightly behind due to the previous scene but this shot delayed the schedule even further. This was down to one of the actresses couldn’t act the right emotions and expressions for the scene causing some frustration among the crewmembers. At this point Brendan decided it would be a good time to have a break. I was asked to run to the shop to get a whole load of ‘essentials’ theses included cigarettes, chocolate, sweets, and chewing gum. When I returned and handed them all out the mood suddenly changed everyone become very upbeat, the frustration seemed to fade away and everyone was happy to continue for a few more hours.

Finally when the ‘Hallway’ scene was completed everyone got stuck into some food Sam had put out. This was great because everyone all sat down and ate together giving everyone some time to relax and get to know each other some more.
After dinner we moved onto the second location ‘The Dining Room’. As there was such a large crew transport seemed a bit of an issue. But everyone pulled together and everyone who had cars took as many people as they could.
I really enjoyed my first day on the project, everyone made me feel really welcome and it was great experience to see a ‘real’ project in production.