Unlucky Productions...The filming stages

An apt name for such an unlucky group I think. Plagued with technical difficulties and cast dropping like flies, we still managed to soldier on and complete our group project 'Securus Viaticus' or 'Easy Money' in latin. Why in Latin? Because we feel there is not enough latin being used in today's society, and it sounds pretty cool. End of.

So with Harry & Tom directing and on the cameras, Carlina as producer and myself on sound we set out to make our film starting where better than with scene 1. Thanks to the lovely Miss Rachel Sowden for sorting out permission for us to film in her house (and also making a mean cup of coffee). With our two main characters, Johnny and Adrian ready to begin we hit our first hurdle. The sound. We couldn't quite work out why it was sounding so distorted. A minor setback though as we soon realised the problem was due to manual mic settings on the Sony Z1. Problem solved, so we began to shoot. When we completely finished the scene it felt like there was finally a light at the end of the tunnel, that we could accomplish the objective and we had a manageable film on our hands. Wrong. How misleading of scene 1.

The next scene to film was scene 3 and the meeting of Oily Pete. A big thank you to Mr Simon Partington for playing the part so well. This scene went surprisingly well too, there were no major setbacks and we finished the scene in good time.

The next scene to film was in The Royal Oak pub, in Bath. A big thank you to them for letting us film there at such short notice! This was the scene between Adrian and his long-suffering girlfriend Cheryl. Filming of this scene went relatively well, we did notice that there was a lot of traffic noise coming through on the mic and also we had some colour and light issues on Cheryl's face because there was a lot of natural light coming in through the window.

It was the next scene, where Adrian and Johnny meet Raggy, that proved the most difficult to film. A few moments where sloppiness proved to overcome professionalism, where you could see mine and Tom's reflection in the windows, tripods being left in shot etc. However, the majority of the time, we did notice these things on set so it was easily fixed. This scene provided us with a good set of bloopers, I don't know if we were all worn out by this time but we all seemed to get the giggles when Tom made his cameo appearance! It was good fun filming this scene, a huge thank you to Mr Edem King for playing the part of Raggy so well and also thanks to Barney Bowles-Bray for playing Raggy's right-hand man. Laughter and bloopers aside, we had some major issues with the location we used which meant that we weren't able to finish the scene how we wanted to, and it was clear that this may affect the final edit of the film. This proved stressful for cast and crew and felt as though we had exhausted our abilities, it was unfortunate for this to happen and felt as though we had to finish when it clearly wasn't finished. So we had to call it a day and think up ways to complete the scene. Another big thank you to the Royal Oak for serving great cyder at stressful times like these!

We decided that the footage we shot for Raggy's scene would probably be enough so decided to get straight on with filming our chase scene. The sun was bidding farewell from the skies which meant that time was against us. Some of the shots are a little bit dark and we probably should have adjusted the iris a little bit more. However, we decided that in the editing stages we could probably use it to our advantage and use the gradual darkening of day to night to emphasise the tension in the film and make it appear more raw. A big thank you to Raggy's merry men, Rob Hoal, Joe Wedgbury, Teagan Lucas and Fran Norris for getting their running gear on and getting their blood pumping! I know how tiring it was because I made a cameo myself as a running hoodlem..Thanks again guys! Last and definitely not least, thank you Matt and Chris for playing our two protagonists. Not once did you let us down, we really appreciate it.

So what have we learnt??

Organisation is key. Cast will often drop out, and in our case, at the very last minute so it is worth having a few people to understudy. locations are also a major factor of setting the theme of a film and any permissions that need to be granted, ought to be in good time and cleared with everyone associated with that location. Also, keep an eye out for minor details that can have a major effect on the final outcome. Tripods in shot, booms in shot, even producers in shot are things that make professional films amateur. The filming process of 'Securus Viaticus' has certainly been a learning curve. Let's hope the editing stages are slightly easier.