For the scene in the sound stage, the main requirement from the production design was that we deconstruct the walls to make them look bare. Within this scene we are establishing that Julian has fulfilled his purpose of creation, and now he doesn't need his workspace. We hinted at this by placing cardboard boxes within the shots to add a layer of realism to what we were trying to achieve. I organised for our main actor to arrive between half 5 and 6 o'clock. We started deconstructing the set around 4 o'clock and setting up the cameras simultaneously in time for his arrival. Once our actor arrived we went ahead with the shoot. We only needed a total of five shots, which we got without any issues. Again, we were unable to record sound in the sound stage, but within this scene there was only a few lines of dialogue which can be done in ADR. I required a sense of grief from the actor which I managed to get. As I have previously discussed, I'm finding it increasingly easy to work with our actor and get the range of emotion which I desire. We've found a way to communicate which only requires me to establish what I want in terms of how I want a scene to feel. From there we successfully work on moulding the lines take by take. With yesterdays shoot, we had a very limited amount of takes whilst maintaining a high level of quality. We wrapped on the shoot after around 2 hours and packed away in time for closure.
Below are some BTS images from the shoot:
Prior to the shoot in the sound stage, I received the news around midday that our main actress, who we have held off shooting with until now, had dropped out of the shoot that was organised for the following day (01/05/18). This shoot had been organised weeks in advance, from back in the middle of April when we found out the availability of the actress. We found that she wasn't available at all during April. Taking a risk based on prior experience of working with her, I decided it best to use the first week of May to have all the shoots which the character appears. There are four in total. Yesterday, when the news was broken that she was unavailable for the rest of this week, I had an extremely tough decision to make. I had two options, either I work with the actresses extremely limited availability, and at the same time run the risk of her dropping out again. Or, I attempt to recast. After mulling it over for a few hours I realised that it was approaching 5 o'clock when we were due to shoot. I didn't want to have that weighing on my mind during the shoot, and I didn't want to attempt to sort it after the shoot because it would be too late to contact people. Based on all of this I decided to have a crack at recasting. Someone came to me with the idea of approaching the actress in Trick of the Dark, which I was attached to as Producer. I asked the Directors permission to 'dual-cast' as we may call it, and I was given his permission to do so. I rang the actress up and explained the situation. I also had the nerve to ask if she was available in the morning for a shoot. Fortunately she was, and we organised it. A situation that was originally a nightmare quickly became ideal. I now have a reliable actress who I really like the look of performance-wise, and I really feel like we can have those scenes done in the time we have left.
As for the first shoot we had with our new actress on 01/05/18, it went extremely well. Based on the extremely short notice, we all met up at the location, which was the Winter Gardens museum in Sunderland. We had previously been on a recce, which alleviated the 'what on earth do we shoot' feeling that can come over you when you haven't been on location. I find that even if you story board and shot list whatever you want to shoot, an unvisited location will distract you making you want to shoot unrelated stuff, taking you off track and behind schedule. Even though when we met up this morning at 10 with the shoot feeling rogue with us hurrying to organise it the day before, we had the comfort of knowing that we had the shots planned based on the pre-production work and the recce. I let the crew set up and get cutaway shots whilst I sat down with the actor and actress and went over the script. I felt it was my duty to do that to get everyone on the same page. The segment of the script we were shooting was the only bit of the script the new actress had read. Myself and the actor introduced her to the world by slowly revealing details and by giving ideas into how the character and script should play out. After that we went in to shoot the scene itself. The shoot went as well as it could have. We were finished within the time frame that we estimated, which was 11-3. We had written permission to film during this time. I shot this scene the way I wanted and I even had time to experiment with interpersonal direction. Even though I was happy with the dialogue that was happening in the takes, I suggested different ways for the actors to approach the scene. This was refreshing for myself and for our main actor, who has consistently been bogged down throughout the production as he has had no one to act with face to face up until this point.
Going forward with Echoes of Silence, we are planning to shoot the remainder of what we have left to shoot over the next week. Our next shoot is Thursday, then Sunday evening, following that Tuesday all day, then we should have all we need. From that point on we'll be fine-tuning the film in post production with visual and audio editing. This is where I feel the film will need the most work, however my task as director at this moment is to continue to utlilize the cast and crew around me to make the best film we can under any given circumstance. We continue to persevere and overcome any issues that come our way, in the hopes of creating a polished film.
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