We shot on Saturday 24th of May in Weston Super Mare and in the second location, Sand Bay.
Praying for no rain actually worked and it turned out to be great weather, if a little windy. The windy actually added to the shoot in the end too, the beach looked amazing and the bodies were covered in sand. It even made the family antics a little more humorous. Tom and Adam had to get the train from Devon, so I picked them up in the morning after going to Tesco's for breakfast supplies for the cast and crew. The cast call was 10am and the crew call was 9.30. I had picked up the equipment a couple of days before and had checked that everything was working well and bought plenty of film and batteries, tape and pens and made copies of the shot list and schedule for the day. By arranging the shots I had managed to compress a two day shoot into one, given the long day and plenty of daylight I thought it was better to shoot that way. I could have shot over several days, but then we would have ended up with hours of footage to plow through for editing, and since there was little dialogue and Javier, our lead actor, was so experienced, I thought it was unnecessary. The first take turned out to be the trickiest. But I supposed that makes sense really. We all had to get used to the location and each other, not to mention some of the actors had never been on film before. So it took about 9 takes to get it right, although in the end we used the 2nd take anyway.
We had some sound issues, getting the boom mike close enough to the door without being in shot and wind sounds as well. But through trial and error and dumb luck, we got it right eventually. The next few scenes went much quicker. the actors had a better feel for the tone of the film and my direction was more confident. This is the first time i have directed actors, although I did direct my own documentary, its not quite the same thing. I had a shot list/script to work from. Since there was no dialogue for the actors I felt I didn't need a separate script. I think this was a mistake, I should have separated the shot list and the script. I felt I missed some shots I would have had because of this. At the beach I would have had more of a variety of shots of the family and been more prepared concerning the kinds of activities I had them do. Also I felt I missed out on the 'money shot' at the end. I had wanted much more of a 'reveal shot of the bodies, and it fell flat a bit in the end. There was no 'Scorsese', Gangs of New York, camera on a crane moment, unfortunately.(http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/scorsese_m.html) Budget did have something to do with this of course, I think this was also due to a lack of communication with Adam, on camera. But we did get some lovely shots of the horse and the dog while we were there that were unplanned and really added to the production value look of the film.
My extras were wonderful, and very patient as I covered them in sand and asked them to lie still for well over an hour. Thankfully it didn't rain, although the wind put sand in more than one persons eye! I had tow cast members let me down at the last minute and had to have Emma stand in for the son and my son Joshua stand in for the mother. Emma was wonderful, and Josh added his 'special' humour to the day, so it worked out better than I expected regarding performances.
The car shots went well too. Adam was stuffed into the boot of the car and managed to get some great shots as Javier drove the car down the drive and out onto the street. Then tom filmed form the passenger seat of my car while we were driving to the beach and we used this footage to 'cheat' the shot, as if you were in the family car.
We also used a shot of my hand turning on the radio to trigger the first track of music in the film, very clever Tom!
It was a long day, but the rain held off and the wind added to the atmosphere and the actors were wonderful. All the extras showed up and even though they ate all the food, and walked straight through one of my 'family' shots accidentally, they were marvellous!
The footage looked really good at the end of the day, and I am sure we can make the film in editing. We might add some more dialogue, but then we might just keep it as it is and use the music combined with the imagery to tell the story, we will have to wait for the editing process to be sure.
