I hate actors!

It's been a while since I made an entry in my journal, so I guess now would be a good time to fill everyone in!

We at DDR Productions spent a few days in the holidays trying to organise ourselves in preparation for our first filming session. There was a hell of a lot of things that still needed to be done before we were ready to shoot. We still needed to organise lights, (we needed a lot of lights!), and we needed to build the set. Dan got the wood to constuct the sets from the Margate tip, and I went around to his place to help construct the set. I ended up driving out to the eastern shore to try and pick up some lights with Daniel Livingston, but his uncle wasn't home, so we couldn't get lights from there. Luckily Dan S managed to get some lights from his dads work, plus we used some lights from the college. Unfortunately, I could be there for the actual filming day as I had an unavoidable commitment, and the date of filming couldn't be changed.

Another drama we had in the days leading up to filming was that one of our two main actors had to pull out due to other commitments, which left us feeling mighty stresed out just days before filming! We were really disappointed, mainly because this person had agreed to act in our film previously, and because he pulled out so close to the filming date. In the end, we managed to find someone else to fill the role, but this person was more of a last resort, as we didn't know how well he could act. As it turns out, he couldn't act very well, and he didn't even look at the script until he turned up for filming. Don't get me wrong, we all really appreciated that he could help us out of a tight spot, but I guess we all would have appreciated a heads up on his lack of previous acting experience, and a bit more of an effort to learn the script.

I've seen the footage that we got from that day, and I have to say I was very impressed with how the set looked. I'll try and get a clip or some still shots up for you, it actually looked a lot better than I thought it would.

Since that filming day in the holidays, we've come to realise that it's no longer realistic to expect to complete the film - a combination of a lack of time, coupled with the logisctics of some of the things that we wanted to do. While this is disappointing for all of us, it's just no longer a realistic expectation. We've decided that we will focus instead on trying to get the "oblivion" scene completed instead, which it seems will be a big enough task by itself.

Another complication which has presented itself in recent weeks was that fact that another of our actors is unable to film on weekends, which presents a problem as it was pretty much the only time that we would have been able to have got a large slice of filming done. As it is approaching the end of the year, I can't miss out on any of my classes at this point. So it presents us with a problem. At the time of writing, we have a room in A block booked for our next filming session tomorrow. At this stage we're all set, but I'm sure something will screw up between now and tomorrow. Judging by our previous luck, it is a certainty. We've changed on of our actors around (the one that could act was basically not available when we needed him anyway), which may or may not turn out to be a disaster. I guess we'll have to wait and see. Let's just say that we all have our reservations.

Until next time!