That’s a wrap! We finally got through shooting, and I’m very excited to see what our editor comes up with! My role on this set was to help out when I could, so as a little assistant around when I was needed - and to also provide actors with anything if they needed anything.
The actors were lovely to work with, and everyone seemed to be happy on set. Our director made us some lovely food, and everyone was well-fed and well-taken care of.
One of the dolly shots that we had decided on, in the end, was very difficult to film, and so took the longest to do so - in which I believe we did around 20 takes. We had one person behind the sofa, one person under the table (me), one person at the sides, and another by the right-hand side of the camera — all for turning off lights in a certain order as indicated by the cinematographer. But, to make matters more difficult, another two people had to somehow blow out the candles at the same time! So, I’m sure you can imagine how difficult this was to achieve. After talking to the editor, it's clear that the take we ended up going with still had its errors, but it was the best one, and while on set there was no way we were going to use up more of our time on it. The vision for the shot was absolutely amazing, though. I wish we had a fuller idea of what we wanted that day prior to shooting, i.e. at the test shoots, but it was an idea that came up in the moment. The candles made it the hard part, and with the dolly and the zoom out, that just simply made everything so much more technical. I have to say, though, we had a lovely group atmosphere and it was tonnes of fun.
As an editor for Old Friends, I was able to keep in touch with the editor for Fallout pretty easily since we were in the same room when the editing magic was happening! I’ve seen the improvement from the earlier cuts to the final one, and I can’t wait for the crit. Overall, I feel that our preparation for this film was pretty good, and I’m satisfied! There are always going to be ways in which it could have been better, but we live and we learn.
Here’s a short video of a technique that we learned on day 1 of shooting — apparently tampons, are a good way to imitate the steam from hot food! Who would’ve known!
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