Professional Toolkit- Filming and Working with Actors.

Our filming day had finally come, and on the first of our two day shoot we were not working with our actor, so most of the day was spent getting any shots or cutaways that did not require the actor. We also lit the master shot for when the actor arrived the next day, so that we could have that ready to go when we got the actor in the next day. We wanted to have as much time with the actor performing as possible so that we could get the most out of him.

I spent most of this day being the stand-in for the actor while the others lit the scene and took some more test shots for the green screen.

On the second day, our actor arrived early as he would rather have been early than late so we set up very quickly and got the actor briefed and with refreshments while we tried to set up the first shot as quickly as possible. Our actor in general was lovely and offered to help on set multiple times. He was also very easy going and didn't need a lot of direction to get what we wanted which was great and very lucky for us. During lunch I spoke to him a little bit about what he does mostly and he described how he had mixed experience of theater and TV. He had done some issue based work before concerning drugs etc. and so I found it very interesting that he was enthusiastic about our project based on his previous work.

On the shoot, I started doing script supervision on the second day and kept timing. Since we started early we were ahead of schedule by about half an hour, so I had to make calls about when we had lunch and which shots we should get done before and after the break. Since we had a subway platter delivered at around 12 I had to make the call to have lunch then rather than at 1. I also took timings of each shot and notes throughout as a script supervisor would to try and highlight any potential continuity problems or give the editor an idea of which takes of the shots appeared to work the best with director's comments and anything I noticed about the shots myself.

Overall it was a very relaxed shooting experience. It was exciting as I felt very professional and we worked very efficiently. The most exciting part of it was seeing all the dollies being used and how the takes ran with the director giving ques and watching from a monitor.