Filming - Day One – Worcester
James: It is great to get up and running after months of this only existing on paper.
Gabby: Myself, I am so not ready to shoot this film. I had become so consumed with the pre-production, getting the location, fitting it out etc, that I haven’t even really picked up a camera in months. James, Larry and I stayed over in the flat the night before and wake up on the morning of the shoot with this ominous feeling in our stomachs. Much to my annoyance Larry (our soundman) wakes up 15 minutes before we are scheduled to start shooting. The stress begins.James: We start pretty much in chronological order, so everything that you see at the start of the film was shot mostly on the first day. This means that Selina and Chris’s first scene was a sex scene! I was happy that we would sense awkwardness necessary for the scene. They both wore pyjamas, which I personally think isn’t the slightest bit sexual, so it adds to the problem between their relationship.
Gabby:I believe this was the first sex scene Selina and Chris had acted but it didn’t seem to phase them. It actually struck me how strange it was that they were laughing and chatting happily right up until James called action where they then launched into the scene. It was the first sex scene I had ever shot and it made me glad that I was a camera operator who had a prop to focus on, rather than Toby the poor sound assistant who didn’t quite know where to look.
James:The day goes relatively smoothly until the sequence when Mike is getting ready for work and Ann asks about trying for a baby. We tried and tried that shot for so long, and it just didn’t work.
Gabby: I think it was something about the angles, Ann was meant to be sat down, and Mike perched on the side of the sofa, it became impossible to get an interesting shot with the two of them. As we struggled to work around it, I think this affected the actor’s spark and we then were faced with two aspects of the scene that was not working.
James: We tried injecting a bit of comedy whereby he was wrestling with electrical leads that were all tangled up, but it didn’t come off. In retrospect we were immediately exposing our lack of directorial preparation, as we should have had that all planned. It felt as if we’d damaged morale on day one, and I was annoyed at the time.
Gabby: I think if I am honest this also affected my confidence, which is something I always struggle with on set.
James: Meeting with the actors in the evening it became obvious that they were a bit uncertain about the experience. Gabs and I decided to re-shoot that scene the next morning.
Day one and we fell behind. Ha ha.
Gabby:I didn’t sleep well that night.
