Well now we have done days of filming Perfect game and it has begun to take shape. The past two days have begun with 7am starts at a bowling alley in Lewisham. After filming in the office in Brixton last Thursday and Friday it was nice to get stuck into some big sections of the script. Unfortunately this also means more work. With what seemed to be a slow start we set up on Monday and began to film the four guys together for the first time. I can honestly say I was very nervous about this as this was the first time all four of my actors had gotten together. Luckily they went together very well and were able to bounce the conversation off of each other and improv lines where need be.
I will say one thing about all of this. I do not like directing. Yeah OK so I wrote the piece and I have a vision of how it should look in my head but I hate directing. It's having your lines being read out. I can't stand to see it. You have to show people how you think it should look and you can't help but come to the realization that it might all be a bit shit. Anyway I digress
So Monday. We need to get as much done in the 3 hours that we have in the alley. We managed to get through a few scenes but before you know it it's 10 am and you need to start packing away. This was a real kick in the teeth. From this we knew we really needed to work faster the next day. After the alley we split into two units and went our seperate ways to film at the same time. My second unit lead by my Assistant Director Karl hopped onto the DLR to get some shots for the opening with two of the actors (On the sly may I add as we may or may not have had permission.....we did not) While I headed over to the Avery Hill campus of Greenwich to film a small scene of two guys meeting after one finishes work. When you watch this scene you may even catch a very good cameo by a certain blog writer. A few different takes from different angles and we were done for the day.
Which leads us to today.
Back at the bowling alley, 7 am. This time there are more actors. There is the lead girl and only real other female role that the character becomes an important role (in later epsiodes) once again the four main guys were there and we got straight into doing what needed to be done. While setting up we decided to shoot the scene we were lighting using two cameras from different angles (Multicam) This turned out to be a godsend. We were able to fly through scenes by capturing it from two different possitions at the same time. Unlike Monday we knew that we could have extra time if we went past 10 am which we did. By 3 hours. Thanks to a very helpful manager (who also knows how to get some great curve on a bowled ball) we were able to get all the extras that turned up to have fun bowling while we filmed all the "arty" shots of different bowling things for montages and other such cut aways. Some of which I am really looking forward to seeing cut together. We finally finished at 1, it's always fun being underground for 6 hours. Where we then sent everybody home except for a small unit and one actor, whom we took with us to film another small scene before breaking for the day.
I'm now writing this back at home and I honestly can not wait for sleep I also want to take the time to just thank any of the extras that came today to help out. Thanks for waiting around for so long before getting to bowl, You'll get your bacon. And if anybody else who was involved today reads this thanks to you too. I couldn't have done anything with out you.
We now have another day at the alley tomorrow before a scene back at my flat. Followed by a small scene Thursday morning and then three days off before a long shoot in a pub on Monday and back to the bowling alley Tuesday for (hopefully) just pick up shots. So that's this time next week I will hopefully be writing a blog entitled "That's a Wrap" I will probably write another blog Thursday keeping you up to date. But until then Keep watching the skies.
