Happy to say the shoot went fairly well in Camden Palace, initially a crew of six, we were also joined by Keith O’Connell to lend us a helping hand. This time filming took place in a laboratory setting which devoured almost 2 hours of preparation before we were good to go. As well as cleaning the room we had booked we also had to make two round trips to my place to collect additional equipment and props. Camden’s owner, Bertrand, was nice enough to lend us some old lab equipment, as well as gave us permission to scavenge any other set of items we find. And plenty we did find and use.
Fabian Sweeney and Catherine Crowley put on a great performance for their part of power starved scientists, more impressively this would mark the first time I’ve worked on a short film where the actors knew their lines before filming their scenes, granted, previous productions only ever involved myself, Cethan, Aida and Piratehelm ( although this allowed plenty of room for improvisation ). The shoot lasted roughly 3 hours with very few breaks in between since we had to take into account we had somewhat of a limited time frame, I’m pretty sure the rest of the crew noticed my eagerness to shoot as soon as possible when I started recording before Fiona or Gemma ( co-directing ) could say ‘action’.
I’m currently loving the newly purchased dolly mount and jib arm we had to drag over to the location and take some time out to setup, you wouldn’t believe how much freedom they can provide when moving the camera around on set and also how much damage they can cause if you forget that the combined equipment only works well in spacious settings and not when people are standing close by. It won’t be long until someone bangs their head or knee against the jib arm, at least it will make the work environment just that bit more interesting.
Glancing over the recorded footage and suffice to say most of it turned out very well. Sadly however, the first few shots were recorded without sound, stupidly enough I had forgotten to turn on the audio device, so let that be a lesson for anyone else hooking up their only Shotgun Mic to their only camera, these things do need power. Since entire scenes required no colour in the end product it was nice to see what the footage looked like without it, by isolating the luminance ( Black and white ) channel you can easily spot small objects in the video footage in greater detail.
The final shoot will hopefully conclude this weekend, as it’s our final weekend before the deadline. We’ll be attending the Fastnet Film Festival the weekend after. The deadline is the 4th of June so editing the film over weekdays is going to be fun for sure.
The Gifted Babies 