First day

First off, I think I should mention that today's schedule was completely different from the plan. Instead of starting at 6:30 AM, we arrived at 2:30 PM. There was a last minute scheduling changes, so everything was pushed back. The good news was that we finished setting up way ahead of the new schedule, so we were just waiting on the actors to arrive. However, the blocking took longer than I thought, and before I knew it we were back on schedule.

I think one of my mistakes today was that I was getting too many takes (especially with the first scene), so from now on I think someone will be keeping track of the time it'll take to film a scene just to keep things moving. Tiffany, one of the ADs (Assistant Director), picked up on this pretty quickly, and it really helped move the shoot forward.

We also had a problem with wires. The house we're using is pretty old (it's a historic house built in 1907), so the tape was picking up the wood when we'd try to tape the wires down. To avoid taping wires/extension cords too much, certain crew members are now designated "wires/extension cords holders".

The last major problem of the day was that there was a miscommunication with the location, so we had to leave a bit early. Tomorrow is a pretty long day of filming (11 scenes), and we're adding 3 scenes that we didn't get to today.

However, I thought the day still went well. The footage looks fantastic, and the sound is great. The kids doing sound, Leo and Benji, are both from my school. Neither one have worked on film sound before, but they both read sound books and were trained on the equipment beforehand. The lighting (worked on by Danny and Max) also looks really neat, especially with the kind of rustic look of the house. Harrison, the DP (Director of Photography) and one of the editors, was able to come up with a shotlist in a day and do a good job of coming up with the shots quickly. Kara (the other AD), Lina (Grip), and JAZ (Art Director/props master/continuity) worked incredibly hard throughout the day, and I hope (even with the bit of stress that entailed) everyone was able to have fun.

Things will move a lot quicker tomorrow, I'm sure. It's going to be a long day though.