My Name is John- Shoot 1

Shooting for final major project starts here then, much earlier than expected but this is down to the fact that we only have John Archer (our lead) for a short amount of time and as such we have to shoot efficiently and quickly in that small window that we have to make this film. All that being said the first shoot was was to take place in Middlesbrough at Andrew's housed was to feature an interview with John's wife while John is unpacking his shopping in the background. This leads to a breaking point where he clatters around in the background and she asks what he is doing, to this John tries to play it off and she attempts to carry on her interview before then questioning what he has actually said to her, this then leads to an argument between John and his wife before he tells a joke to the camera. The scene itself is relatively basic; we film his wife being interviewed with him in the

We'll get to the shoot itself but at this point I would like to say that it is while they were setting up the camera and sound equipment I took the two actors into a separate room and did character work with them, this I will go into more detail in its own post but I will say that this was very easy for them to build their characters, though it was easier it seemed for Susie than it was for John, which is fine because John was playing a character closer to himself so needed less work anyway. So anyway, on to the shoot itself, as I mentioned, the shortlist was fairly basic as to shoot the mockumentary style you need to make the camera as fluid as possible so it seems like you're shooting live and not scripted. So in this sense we had plenty of time to get coverage so we started with the shot of the interview which was much like a two-shot with John out of focus in the background. We shot the whole scene from this angle for safety and I must say it went well although the only issue we had was making cards fall out of the cupboard on cue for the punchline of the scene.

I must also say that we got good performances from both actors in this scene and I certainly felt that they embraced what we had been through in terms of character prep. The only issue I had in terms of performance in this scene was the line "what do you need a hairbrush for anyway, you've hardly got any hair" I hated this line from the beginning as I can't help but feel it is a huge example of telling the audience what's funny and thus making it not funny. I supposed this to Sarah on set that we cut the line in half and just make it "what do you need a hairbrush for?" so that we still have a line in there and don't explicitly explain the joke away, but after a few takes with this new line, we changed back to the original and my advice wasn't taken. This wouldn't be the last time I felt ignored on set. However my next piece of advise was heeded and I do feel the film will benefit for it, when it came to  cutting into another shot from the dining room to the kitchen they wanted to do a straight shot from one room to the other, I advised against this as it wasn't very documentary like and instead the camera should stay rolling and we should physically move in, that way the situation feels more organic because it is as though the crew are reacting to a real situation instead of fulfilling a scripted encounter. So we did this moving shot and to be honest from what I can tell, after a few attempts and takes Ethan did really well to get a shot that worked well (I havant yet seen the footage to know if this is the case but it seemed that way). From here to be honest it was all cutaways and coverage angles that weren't necessary but worth shooting just to be safe, what really annoyed me was the words "can we just get an interview with the dog" this may be me being pretentious but it looks incredibly childish and amateurish to want to do an impromptu interview with a dog, the camera was rolling for a good few minutes, not a sound from the dog, it is unprofessional and cringe worthy, I could understand if it had some bearing on the plot or even was a part of a joke but there was no planning or relevance. That entirely pointless interview did however mark the end of the shoot so there is not much else to be said about this shoot other than it went well but I came away feeling undervalued somewhat and like this production had became a joke very quickly, hopefully I am wrong and I'm overreacting to what was just a bit of fun.