Unstuck Production Diary

Production Diary #5 - Shooting Day 2

For me, Day 2 started for me less than 2 hours after Day 1 had finished. I’d gone to bed after 4am and had to get up at 6am. Like the previous day, I spent most of the morning feeling ill.

Once we got on location and started shooting (behind schedule, of course) the sickly feeling slowly went away for the first time. I did however find that I wasn’t able to eat or drink, and realised that all I’d eaten was a bowl of porridge, 2 slices of pizza and a pear in the last few days.

Despite my obviously sleep and nutritional deprivation I felt surprisingly ok, and once we started shooting, the day moved relatively swiftly.

The day was hardest on our set designer, Joe. Joe spent most of the day carrying various bits of furniture and props around wellington (and when he wasn’t doing that, became a fill in runner) due to our lack of cars. In a somewhat surreal moment I went to get in the lift and Joe came out carrying a large arm chair, quite literally dripping in sweat. He’d carried the chair by himself up a narrow and steep set of stairs, up a hill, and then back down the other side of the hill. Having moved the chair myself, it’s awkward enough carrying it with two people, I have no idea how he managed it alone.



It was Joe’s first shoot and he was really chucked in the deep end. He handled it impressively well on the day, although I’m sure he’s learnt a lot. And may never want to make another film again.

Joe’s work acts as a testament to how important the right attitudes are on film sets. It would’ve been easy for him to become frustrated (and I’m almost certain he did) because at times he was running around after people - which was most certainly not his job. But if he hadn’t of done so, this film wouldn’t be possible. If any of the people we’ve had hadn’t been so hard working and positive there is no way we would could be making this film. Having people who are willing to pitch outside their departments where required is hugely important on a (low budget) film set. And Joe’s work (as runner, not set designer) made me realise how vital and underrated the work of a reliable runner/production assistant is.

Day 2 really reinforced the importance of the work we’d done in rehearsals. In just 15 minutes, we could work out the best way to play a scene in a rehearsal. But trying to rehearse on set, in small spaces with a heap of people and gear, is nearly impossible. If we hadn’t had rehearsed each scene already, the quality of our actors performances would’ve been greatly diminished - we simply wouldn’t have the time or space to refine things to the same level. That’s not to say things weren’t reworked on set - they were. But not as drastically as we did in rehearsals. Without the base that rehearsals gave us, the small adjustments we made on the day wouldn’t have been possible, and ultimately would’ve damaged the film.

We finished at our first location on time, and although we were packed, leaving and just resetting at the time we were meant to, the security guard kicked us out. As a result a number of decorations from the location appear to have gone missing, which is disappointing and embarrassing (the location had been very helpful, so it hurts to let them down) and gave me more headaches to deal with when I should’ve been focusing on the next days of shooting.



The next location we went to with a barebones crew of just the actors and camera crew. We were shooting in a SPCA (or RSPCA if you’re from the UK) which filled in for a hospital. It worked really well, and being a charity, they were so much more accommodating and helpful than a hospital would’ve been.

We wrapped about 20 minutes later than scheduled, which given the fact we started an hour late, should be considered a pretty successful day.
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Unstuck is a film being produced for entry into the New Zealand Tropfest Competition in 2015. Director, Jonathan Mines, is keeping a regular production diary here. More updates can be found on Facebook and Twitter.
 
Production Diary #6 - Shooting Day 3

Day 3 got off was off to a great start when I arrived on location to promptly set off the alarms. Like the day before, Aimee and I woke early to get to location (Juniper Gin Bar & Restaurant) with Joe, to dress the set and make sure everything was in order.

The previous night I had concealed a few facts (lied) in order to convince a minivan driver to take us to location with a heap of gear and furniture for the set.

For the first time at the start of a shoot day, I didn't feel like being ill. Yesterday had gotten better with time, and the crew was settling into a more efficient routine.image



That confidence and composure quickly vanished as I made the mistake of resetting the power which set off the alarms.

Despite disarming the alarm, it remained on a 'warning' mode, and so after all the generosity we had received from the owner of Juniper, we had to ask her to come at 7am and reset the alarms.

The rest of the cast and crew began arriving at 8am. We had allotted an ambitiously short time for hair and make up (a mistake I won't make again) and so started behind schedule.

Day 3 was always going to be the hardest, as we were shooting half of the script (nearly 3 times as much that on our other shooting days). In this sense, day 3 timed simultaneously perfectly and terribly. Perfect as the cast and crew had settled into an efficient routine; terrible because we had had 3 long days (by the end of day 3, Aimee and I had only slept 5 of the last 66 or so hours).

However, once we were underway, we moved through set ups fairly swiftly. There were a few hiccups, such as our DoP having to vanish temporarily (due to parking tickets) and realising we were missing an essential piece of costuming, but everyone picked up the slack well and kept things moving.

Our cast looked awesome thanks to Make Up artist Sam Wagg, Hair Stylist Anna Gibb, and Art Director/Costume Designer Aimee Smith. The set was similarly impressive thanks to Joe Murton.image



We finished less than an hour behind what was a fairly ambitious schedule (but still a 12 hour one for most people). Most people had packed their own gear and left at around 8pm, leaving Aimee and I to clean the bar.

We didn't finish up until about 10pm. We had a lot of trouble getting home (apparently every minivan in town was being used/they had caught onto our ways). Eventually I called two taxis. The first refused to even take our bags (claiming it was standard practice to not even take groceries in a taxi). The next two who arrived were incredibly helpful, assisting in loading gear into the taxi, starting their meters late, etc.

Arriving home, I got the first 8 hour sleep I'd had in over a week, mistakenly believing the next few days would be a chance to catch my breath.
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Unstuck is a film being produced for entry into the New Zealand Tropfest Competition in 2015. Director, Jonathan Mines, is keeping a regular production diary here. More updates can be found on Facebook and Twitter.
 
We had a lot of trouble getting home (apparently every minivan in town was being used/they had caught onto our ways). Eventually I called two taxis. The first refused to even take our bags (claiming it was standard practice to not even take groceries in a taxi).

That just seems crazy - what's the point of getting a minivan taxi if not to carry a lot of people and bags? I'm curious - maybe I missed it somewhere earlier - did you consider renting a van or two for the duration of the shoot? I'm not sure what the situation is like in NZ, but in the states you can readily get vans for $20/day+mileage, so it seems like it would be more economical (and reliable, based on your experience) than having to rely on taxis. Of course I guess that also depends on your parking situation...
 
I did briefly consider, but minivans are over $100 a day here (or at least were where I looked). In future I would consider just sucking it up and just paying for one to save the headache. I'd probably get decent mileage playing the student filmmaker card.
 
Makes sense, that's a lot more expensive. I forgot you're only 19 too - that would make it very difficult to rent here, even at 21 they often charge an extra fee and generally they prefer 25 or older.
 
Yeah, I would have suggested renting a uHaul or something. But here you only get the "cheap" rate if it's a one-day-only thing. I suppose I probably would look into borrowing a larger car. Cause at least in America you can count on if you don't own a truck or SUV, someone else surely does.

On a separate note, I don't think I've ever seen that hairstyle on a man before. You trendsetters, you!
 
Yeah, I would have suggested renting a uHaul or something. But here you only get the "cheap" rate if it's a one-day-only thing. I suppose I probably would look into borrowing a larger car. Cause at least in America you can count on if you don't own a truck or SUV, someone else surely does.
Mm, age makes that hard. But as said, if we had a number of locations next time I'd look at getting someone older/with their license and insurance to hire something in their name. That said, I would also make my DoP responsible for getting all camera and lighting gear to set next time, as that was the largest headache.

Makes sense, that's a lot more expensive. I forgot you're only 19 too - that would make it very difficult to rent here, even at 21 they often charge an extra fee and generally they prefer 25 or older.
Yeah. It's similar here, and it really doesn't help that I only have my 'learners' license (I'm not sure what the US equivalent of that is)


On a separate note, I don't think I've ever seen that hairstyle on a man before. You trendsetters, you!
ha, well I encouraged each department to try something experimental/to have fun with what they were doing, so we have a lot of fun hair styles and the like. On a practical note, Jordan had a very difficult hairstyle to work with (he has a man bun + shaved sides).
 
Production Diary #7 - Final Day of Shooting

Production Diary #7 - Final Day of Shooting

By the end of shooting, starting the day badly had almost become tradition on set.I had to speed home as I’d managed to forget the CF cards for the camera. Thankfully, having had a couple of days off prior to the final night of shooting, we were more prepared. My DoP briefed the crew while I was gone, and we started pretty much on schedule.

We even managed to finish at the first location on schedule without any disasters.

Of course things didn’t stay like that. Without there being any particular problems, we finished 2 hours behind schedule. At 2am. A lot of people had work at 6am. With full credit to our cast and crew, spirits remained high.

That positivity had existed throughout the entire shoot, and despite the issues we had, made it the most enjoyable shoot I’ve been on. It’s hard to explain how much of a difference having a positive team makes. On film sets, things pretty much never go to plan. Conditions sometimes suck (e.g. filming at 2am on a work night). It’s easy to become frustrated.

Having an enthusiastic and committed team can make these difficulties a shared, enjoyable experience, when it could easily become a painful grind (which would be surely reflected in the films quality). For the period of the film shoot, you become a kind of family, whereas other sets sometimes feel like a bad family holiday.

People tend to feed off one another too. You want to work as hard and complete your job as well as your colleagues. You make friends, and want to work with one another again (I’ll be asking everyone from this team first when I need to assemble another crew in future).

It’s horribly cheesy, but a positive attitude really is vital. Ultimately it makes the film shoot an enjoyable, memorable experience (and when no one is being paid, surely this is the aim?), it improves the film, and it can mean more work in future.

That doesn’t mean I was happy with our scheduling issues, but I’ll discuss the issues I had with scheduling and producing in future.

I supposed the belated end to our final night (well, morning technically) of shooting was appropriate, given how the entire shoot went. All in all I am incredibly proud of everyone involved in this project. Whilst it has been, in some ways, the hardest 5 days of my life, I felt a weird sense of loss after sleeping in the day after. The sudden lack of stress was disorientating and as I write this, I find myself already thinking about the next project.

But until then we have a similarly tight post-productions schedule to get through.
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Unstuck is a film being produced for entry into the New Zealand Tropfest Competition in 2015. Director, Jonathan Mines, is keeping a regular production diary here. More updates can be found on Facebook and Twitter.
 
Congrats on finishing production and I look forward to seeing the end product (and seeing it taking the international festival circuit by storm).
 
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