It is the final week before the shoot and my god if I thought I was shitting myself last week, I had no idea. So this and probably any subsequent post this week has the potential to be a combination of my usual South Park ending ("you know, I've learned something today...") and screaming paranoia ("everyone knows, that I have no fucking clue what I'm doing"). In order to counteract that, I think I'm gonna use this blog as my to-do list of stuff that I have to get done pre-shoot.
Things that can be ticked off the list first. I've finished rehearsals with a session with Chris and Richie on Sunday night. Chrsi has taken to the subtlety of screen acting like a duck to water and it just seems to be the most natural thing in the world for Richie. We laid a lot of groundwork about the characters, who they are, how they know each other, where they are in their lives and what makes them tick. I hesitate to use the clichéd word motivation when it comes to character but we looked at the key points in the scene, what is happening outside of the scene and what is going on inside the heads of Leonard and Weaver, two guys that I made up but are becoming more and more embodied and owned by Chris and Richie as time goes on. It's actually kinda weird to let them go, they're not mine alone any more. As the guys now know the characters we have also been able to have a little fun improvising the characters and additional scenes. Frankly the stuff they came up with is fucking golden and there may be more of that in Little Things than my original dialogue. That's cool, as long as the story is told the best it can be, I'm happy.
So jobs to do this week:
- Legal agreements for everyone involved. Get them finalised and printed
- Equipment, I need a tripod, a boom, a condenser mic, a windjammer, some XLR cable as a minimum
- Shooting schedule. I broadly know what I'm doing, tricky shots first, dialogue scenes with improv after
- Make up. I may or may not have a make up artist on the days, still don't know.
- Lighting is nearly sorted, through Richie I've been in touch with a lighting expert who wants to get involved. I feel like Blanche in Streetcar Named Desire, relying on the kindness of strangers
- Establishing shots with Chris, they may hit the cutting room floor but I still have to schedule and shoot them
- Ambient sound tracks for park and pub, about five minutes of each
- Popping into the pub to make sure everything is still okay for Sunday morning.
- Some final camera and editing tests, specifically around how feasible it is to convert to wide screen in post production or whether it's better to use the pixel stretch on the camera
Tomorrow and Wednesday are days to be dominated by work. You know, the real work that pays the mortgage. After that Thursday and Friday are days off, and devoted to Little Things. Presumable that will be when my head explodes.
Talk later, and in the meantime I leave you with more pictures from rehearsal.
M
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