Days 13/14

7th and 8th of February saw a weekend of filming - are here's the belated writeup.

I have to say, tiring as it is, how much more you can get done in a weekend. Consecutive days filming keep everyone in the mood and helps actors stay in the zone. Also the sense of comradery increases which helps on the set vibe. I was a tad nervous before the shoot as snow was forecast. With crew coming from Cambridge and snow would have made the shoot a no no. After putting in a serious amount of planning for every day thats the last thing i want.

Day 13 had three scenes. We needed to nail these as it was Rod's last day and i didn't want to inconvenience him get him back the next day just for a few hours. The first was a walk down stairs for the main cast - Rod, Chris, Kris, Ruth, Sandra and Barry. Fot a simple sequence of shots this took far too long. Will we ever learn to pace things out rather than going slow and rushing at the end?

Next was when one of the charcters gets bitten. Myself and Gav had worked on this one before, shots, angles etc. Unfortunatly as we had taken spo long on the first scene we were rather rushed on this one. As i said Rod's departure was imminant and i think this played on my mind. Just about got away with it though, ionically with too many shots while looking back we should have stuck with our planned angles. This is a by product of directing/producing and AD'ing myself. I have no room to manourver - always planning who i have to chase up for the next shot before the current one is even done.

Last scene for the day was the charcters holed up in an office. We seem to have used every room in DMU that was usable and ended up in a wide corridor type sapce. Initially the plan was to have the zombies banging on the doors throughout. However as the doors had windows this seemed to make litle sense - the characters sitting around talking while zombies stared at them. I pushed the zombies back so they arrived later in the scene. This gave the scene more room to breath as the dialogue and not the zombies were the focus.

Day 14 - and we're back in the small room. Lots of zombies in this one and an action scene to boot. See above picture for my good friend Martyn Quinn as one of the zombies. Some great performances from all - zombies and humans alike - made this scene a winner. Time flew by and we needed to lose a corridor scene and move on to yet another toilet. Mike Cimpher came all the way for London for this so we really needed to shoot this today. The toilet ended up covered in blood and my nerves were shreaded at the fear of it not washing off.

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