Looking Back At Filming Heads or Tails

After a three week break, I finally have the right frame of mind to look back at Four Eyes' production of the short film Heads or Tails.



Gulp; it's another of those moments when as a blogger, one looks at the date of the last post and thinks "Three weeks! It can't be!"



But on the plus side, these blogs are meant to be reflective, and one can't reflect without perspective, and for that one needs distance. Even the week after we finished filming, when our lecturer Mike asked me how filming went, I struggled to give him a considered answer.



I think I can do that now.



Three weeks ago we were ready for the off. Just twelve hours away from starting. Kate gave me a lift into the uni on the Friday morning, which were spent anxiously pacing up and down. I got there good and early, as did Jaeeun, who was frantically finishing off the storyboard.



The others were delayed due to their bus not running, which upped the tension still further, but we finally reached our opening location, the SU shop. With hindsight, we should have done some unofficial filming the day before, since we were all so anxious that we seemed to develop an extra set of thumbs instead of fingers. However, we were equally paranoid about running the battery down, so had decided against it. The cramped nature of the shop meant that some of the scenes were tricky, and when we finished it was more with a feeling of relief than actual satisfaction, but off we went to Jaeeun's rooms to film the next scene.



It was only when we reached the Hobgoblin that I began to relax into the process and even enjoy it. Darren --the landlord-- was a revelation as the bar manager and really got into the part.



The cafe scenes on the Monday went well for the most part. In fact the only problematic session was the lecture scene that had to be finished off during our last session on the Monday. By this time energy levels were low, shots needed to be made from specific angles to hide the fact that we had lost the audience we'd had shots during the early (thereby raising potential continuity problems) and everyone was feeling a little tired and stressed.



It was only after some days after my conversation with Mike that I realized that it was this difficult last session that had so jaundiced my view of the whole experience. Most of the time filming went much more easily than it did for Doorways because we knew what we were doing, but ending on a low left a poor impression of the whole process. It shows how endings --even ones in real life-- can affect the impression of what's gone before.