Shooting Secret Smile

On Monday I shot my drama piece Secret Smile. I secured my cast and crew to come to my first location which was Cavendish Tea Rooms at 10am for crew and 11am for cast. I chose to stagger the times for the cast and crew so that I could organise the set up with my crew and allow them time to take in my ideas for the shots and do a few practice runs before the actors arrived. 

 I had three actors for the first half of the day and was great fun filming with them. They were very patient and each time we took another take the actors were very good at maintaining the same enthusiasm and energy in each performance. 

Our first location was very adaptable and it was great that the customers in the shop were all excited to see what was going on and kept in keeping with TV by not looking at the camera and acting natural. Although this is only a minor thing it has helped add to the realism of the scene, improving the overall quality of the shots. 


 As it is a working business, a problem we had to overcome was the noise from the kitchen. Mike was my sound operator and he did a fantastic job in getting the boom mike as close to the actors as possible and has managed to avoid the kitchen noise taking over the actors dialogue. 
When at the second location, we struggled to time the pace of how dark it would get before we filmed the Mugging Scene. We needed the street lamps to be on however we also needed it to be dark enough for the scene to get away with it looking like a realistic mugging. We was finally able to shoot the final scene and had to change the gain for it to be clear enough to focus on the actors but dark enough to create the realistic features that the scene required. Lex did a brilliant job of keeping up with the actors as the mugging took place by keeping it focused, steady and panning to the right point just as the mugging happens. 

Overall, I have really enjoyed filming Secret Smile and was great fun learning how to overcome random problems that would appear during our shoot and manage them calmly, keeping professionalism for both actors and crew. After filming this unit, I have become so much more confident in dealing with equipment and have benefited a lot from learning from my crew and how to communicate with both cast and crew. 

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