Action!

Well today was our first day of shooting at the magnificent Hanbury Manor! I'm stressed, I'm tired, but I've had a great time so far and it's been an absolute joy working with Ashleigh and Rod.

One of the challenges of the day was setting up and packing up the track and dolly without delaying the shoot. We also had to have it returned to the loan store earlier than we wanted to wrap for the day, but Claire was the hero of the day and drove it back and then came all the way back to help pack up everything else.

I feel very lucky to be working with Ashleigh and Rod, as they are both extremely patient and are always offering help. I have been focussing most of my attention on working with the actors as it is an area I have little experience in, and I have confidence in my crew to be able to work without me constantly looking over their shoulders.

However, as I have been concentrating mainly on rehearsing with Ashleigh and Rod and fine-tuning the script, I have not spent enough time on storyboarding. I would have appreciated an extra week to make a really tight storyboard but as it stands I have sadly left our camera operator a little lost, which is unfair to her, but either way I would have had to compromise on either the script or the storyboard. Tonight I have been putting some more work into it and hopefully tomorrow will go more smoothly.

But overall I have already had a great experience on set and I hope my cast and crew are enjoying themselves also!

Laurence.