Film Workshop – ‘Moving Day’ HOD Meeting + Location Recce
Film Workshop, On-Set ProductionHOD Meeting
On Wednesday 8th November, we held a HOD meeting for Moving Day. This was led by Mara, our producer, and was to ensure everyone was updated on the pre-production process and could relay the information to other members of the crew within their respective departments. I found it useful to bring Esther (1st AD), Oliwia (DoP), Mara (Producer) and myself as the director into the same space to discuss it in-person.
One thing I’ve found to be a major challenge with coordinating and planning for production is communication. Whilst the ability to be in constant communication across several platforms is a privilege, it is also a burden as it can get overwhelming and difficult to manage. In the future, I want to keep communications between crew in one place and set working hours so that we are able to switch off at night.
Overall the HOD meeting allowed us to establish what was done, needing completed, and an opportunity to voice any concerns or queries. I would definitely push to have more regular HOD meetings with the next producer I work alongside as it made it feel a lot less disjointed and impersonal to be able to discuss in-person and not just over a messaging platform.
Location Recce
Michael, our actor playing Alistair, generously offered for his flat to be used as our location for Moving Day. We were having a lot of issues sourcing a location, so this alleviated a lot of stress from our producer Mara and myself and for that I am very thankful! So far it has provided us a great and promising foundation to work in. The space itself is nicely decorated, well-lit and has an interesting layout that lends itself to creative shot ideas.
I arrived on set with a preliminary shot list in mind, but being able to envisage the shots within the space altered some of my plans. Once we had secured our location Kyle modified the script to fit the action to work with the spatial layout of the house.
Oliwia took dimensions and made a rough sketch of the floor plan which I would later convert into blocking plans in Shot Designer. In the mean time, I walked throughout the space to envision the blocking and begin to understand how the action would be directed and move from exterior, to interior, to exterior again.
Below is a video Oliwia took to replicate one of our proposed tracking shots as Blair (played by Abigail) enters the kitchen-diner area and begins to pack her final moving box. This is an establishing interior shot after the establishing exterior shot.
Oliwia and Mara noted down available plug sockets, the dimmable lights, any continuity issues (clocks, oven clock, reflective surfaces) to consider when shooting. Thankfully we were able to address these ahead of time and it isn’t something we only noticed on the shoot itself, as we will be able to work around them and factor it into our shooting schedule and setup times.
The house offers a lot of natural light and beautiful practical lights that we are able to fully control via a dimmer switch. The location itself has made the role of cinematography and production design already a bit more forgiving.
Michael has allowed us to store equipment in his spare room, which gives us more space for our crew and a designated space to manage our kit. We noted some potential sound recording concerns during the recce, such as the wine fridge in the corner of the room, but will test this with the proper mics on the shoot days.
Michael also had two very sweet dogs called Carter and Hubble who will be kept in his bedroom during shooting, but we will need to be mindful of any potential noise coming from them and anyone with allergies or issues around dogs. They will definitely boost crew morale however! <3
After we blocked our interior shots, we moved outside so that Oliwia and I could figure out how our exterior shots would look and where to place the dolly.
There is construction work being done on the house above Michael’s, so there’s a skip outside in the driveway that we have to work around for shot composition and dolly framing. Michael has assured us that the construction work doesn’t happen consistently (!) and that we should be fine for sound recording.
Oliwia planned where the dolly tracks would roughly be positioned in the image below. We are hoping to cover the entire scene on the dolly tracks with carefully considered blocking. The main difference from the reference image is that the car will be further from the pathway, facing directly towards the gate, and have the boot already opened. As the ground below is uneven, we have had to account for time to level out the dolly tracks with wooden blocks and asked a member of crew to be a dolly grip that day to help Oliwia and Gus.
Our biggest issue that the recce presented was the noise coming from a busy road running parallel to Michael’s house. We recorded a sample of the noise to show to our post-production team – Sophie Brownlow for the dialogue mix and Max Brodbeck for the sound design mix. There were very few points in which there were no traffic sounds, so we have altered our shots to prevent as few cuts as possible in which the continuous stream of traffic will pose a major issue.
We have planned to discuss this with Sophie and Max and find out if this is an issue we cannot avoid or work around – through lavalier mics or minimal cuts, for example – and if we need to replan the blocking and use of location.
Our next plans are to hold acting and blocking rehearsals the following week to prep our actors and ensure they’re comfortable with their roles and in my direction prior to the shoot. Overall, I’m very excited to work in this location and thankful to Michael for allowing us to film here!