Shooting ‘Sneaker Spastic’ Part 1 – w10

Friday the 14th May was the first day of shooting and we decided after changing the location was that the first part of scene 1 and last part of scene 3 would be in the 112 Collaboration lane. After receiving film permission from the Melbourne City Council, stakeholders were notified and I got Friday’s details of delivery times and we were ready to shoot. Things that went wrong during the shoot was timing, stakeholder interruptions and actors communication. The loss of time happened early Friday morning when I thought we wouldn’t spend much time picking up the camera kit. About 45 minutes got lost and the monitor wasn’t working. However, when doing the shooting list for the weekend, we thought about things that could go wrong and the scenes we were doing this day were not big scenes but more action scenes with running and walking which wouldn’t take too much time. At 12.15 the filming hit the deadline and that was part 1 on filming. A group meeting was held directly after to find out how to handle issues that arose and solutions made. I as a director was challenged to the ultimate by the actor and communicating was hard but I decided to continue and get the production done instead of continuing discussing. It worked.

No matter how much time and neatly paper work was done to get film permission, some of the stakeholders came and interrupted. The bosses knew what was going on and I realized at a point that the film permit was given for the entire lane, not just the dead end. Strangely, even though this was not I applied for and no witch hat and pedestrian management officer was made, the film permit was still given. Phone calls and emails clearly shows which part I applied for and I got more film permit than expected, including one of the stakeholder’s private property. The confusion of why the interruptions occurred and I felt we had control and non-control over the location got answered, and I realized we had not done anything wrong here. The ‘Ahaaa’ moment came when I realized we had been given the permission to film on one of the owner’s property and he was surprised the council had allowed us to. In the end of the first shooting, we also improved our communication with each other and could not wait to film on the Sunday.