Production day 1

Dealing with the weather

It was the first time filming a movie and it was a learning experience. The day started with a very nice sunny weather.  It was very surprising to have such a bright day, because compare to the weather of the other days did not match. This caused a big worry for everybody in the group as our first conversation was about what would happen if today is an outlier and the next day we film, it goes back to cloudy weather. We decided to take advantage of the weather by filming the more calm shots that suited the sunny weather. We also had to change our location to a bench near by. The original location had one side in which was too dark compared to the rest.

 

The original location with the normal weather we expected while we were location scouting

 

The day of filming with the new location and the sunny lighting

 Changing the plan

 

This was the first of many deviations of the plan, which was something I wasn’t very happy about. In paper our shots made sense and they worked well together but in practice things weren't working. We had to change some shots because of the new location or the sun getting in the way.

 

For example this shot didn’t look right, with the camera being too shaky and it was hard to follow, so we changed it to be a over the shoulder shot instead of a pov.

 

Little details

A lot of us didn’t know how to play chess but as our story relies on a character noticeably knowing about chess and one who didn’t, we tried to set it up the best way we could, this took a bit of time to familiarize with the chess moves we wanted the characters to made. The other thing that took up a chunk of the time was the lack of confidence and knowledge of the equipment and that it was the first time the actors had acted in something.

 

We knew about this beforehand and the actors were still very good. But In hindsight there were some extreme faces and actions that were needed but caused trouble for the actors as it took time for them be comfortable doing them.

In general this day was all about getting comfortable with what we were doing and adapting, A lot of thing didn't go as planned, it was slow to figure things out and it wasn't as productive as I would have liked. But what we did do today were important necessary things that will help us go faster the 2nd day.