In a sunny field all day…what a horrible way to spend our time. Frankly it’s been the only full day outdoors we’ve enjoyed. It was nice to take our time with shots, capture a few improvised moments, bask in the sun, and feel relatively care-free for once during the shoot. It’s been incredibly stressful and manic. It’s hard to believe we started filming almost two months ago. They’ve flown by (despite a few bumps along the way).
One section of the shoot involved me trying to scare off some birds, unfortunately they scarpered before we could actually get the shot set up so there’s a rather interesting/different take on that in the film now. We only had a few moments of dialogue, but they proved hard to capture as the sun hid behind clouds, plus helicopters and planes flying over quite regularly (first time I’ve known it happen that regularly in Hykeham). On a more exciting note, during the shoot, someone started a bonfire in their back garden. We decided to incorporate the fire into the film, as we had plenty of time to improvise and it looked stunning with the sun shining behind it.
After a short break, and watching the sun set, we headed back to my grandparents’ home to film the biggest, wordiest scene in the film, a moment which serves as a centre point, really digging into the theories behind “The Big Crunch” and exploring the underlying themes of the film. As we only had two and a half hours to shoot the scene we were a little rushed. After a relaxing day we found ourselves heading in the other direction as our first night shoot hit numerous problems. First of all was sound (again). Nearby traffic was occasionally disruptive (even though the area itself tends to be one of the quietest around). Time pressures and self-criticism were the biggest problems overall though. I had one big dramatic moment to reach and we only had 10 minutes left to capture it. I’d been building the moment up for some time and when it came to it was struggling to hit the right note. After a short bit of improvising, and support from fellow cast Tom Bridger and Heather May, we got there in the end. And another successful day was had.
