BA had arrived while we were out, so we set about using him to catch up on a couple of missing shots featuring the Young Boy.
As time had progressed, my thoughts turned to the indoor scenes we needed to do. I’d had a re-think over night, because of the lack of time, and decided to re-write that scene by changing the setting of that opening scene. I suppose these are the luxuries of directing your own script?
Anyway – Three important things had to happen in that first scene
- The Younger Brother had to offer the Older Brother his lucky charm
- The Older Brother had to refuse it
- The Younger Brother had to put his lucky charm into the Older Brother’s bag without the Older Brother seeing.
I suggested these changes to DG and MM and they seemed to think it might work. They tried various cars, of those belonging to the crew, but decided in the end to go for my sister in law’s car, as it had tinted windows – making it easier to film. without light overload from the outside apparently.
It took a while to set up and then we bundled the two actors in the back, sister in law driving and MM in the passenger seat calling the shots.
Again from the rushes I saw on the day it worked really well. The cricket bag was between them and point 1, 2 & 3 got played out in the back of the car ending with BA hiding the charm in the bag as WD talked on his mobile. Better still – the cricket pitch and filed appears in the background of the GoPro shot, nicely brining us to the location of the main action to come.
About the GoPro – Having done a few shots with it, I was really impressed.
However more impressive was the selection of mounts DG had that we could use to attach it to almost anything. That and the extended battery life provided by the cage housing/DSLR battery combo I’d purchased a few weeks back (by Tehkron CagePro) – made it an invaluable tool.
Only a few shots had to be taken care of before we tackled taking BA out to the quiet road area to film his shots, which we would then intercut with the ones with the bike earlier. There was one scene BA enjoyed, where the Young Brother trips up as he runs into the pavilion. Luckily for us the cricket club had a large sack of sawdust – which we put on the floor. We covered it in a coat and got him to fall on it a few times. Shot from behind it actually looked really good. So BA, I can confirm – a bit like Tom Cruise – does his own stunts with great enthusiasm (rare gems indeed)!
Finally everything else was done and it was BA’s curtain call… We set off to the road again… once more in the pouring rain. It was raining so much I started get panicky about the light. It was fading fast and I had no idea how the D610 would cope with it. We got to the road and parked as we were before. Then DG and MM drove off in their cars. I sat and waited.
They didn’t come back.
So I drove up to find them parked a little way along the road staring at a side entry grate at the side of the road. I had seen them in my location scouting but wasn’t sure they were useable, but no – They were perfect apparently.
We set up in the pouring rain. Everyone was ready to go, and someone asked for the cricket ball.
Which we’d left behind at the field….
KA (Posh Woman) was sitting in my car keeping warm… so we hightailed it back to the pitch, got a number of balls and sped back. The daylight if anything had faded more… Trying not to panic I pulled back up at the wet crew loitering around the grate and we set to work.
It took a while to get all the shots, so long in fact the rain faded and the sun actually started to emerge. But we were nearly there. My takeaway memory from this set of shots was the shot of the Posh Woman shaking the Young Boy’s dead body at the side of road. We used The GoPo to film this, from the Young Boy’s point of view.
We had KA looking upset and tearful doing the shaking and pulse taking and BA laughing silently because the shaking was tickling him…. Oh and the fact he was lying on the boot liner from the MX5 to keep him off the wet road. It’s all glamour this film making lark…
Back to the cricket filed we headed. One final shot of WD shoving the charm into his cricket whites… and we were done.
We packed up, we tidied up. The cards from the GoPro and the D610 got backed up to my laptop and went with the Editor (SE). We said our goodbyes and made plans to meet again to watch an edit. DG’S Audi TT somehow swallowed all his kit and MM. SA head off to pick up her kids from a motorway service hotel. Everyone trickled away…
Leaving me eating cake… and packing away biscuits from the 80s.
It’s a glamorous job this directing business.
#sendcake