Mum and Dad Shoot - Day Fifteen

Got in at about half six this morning after the first of our night shoots at the office location. It was weird going from days to nights – having a lie-in and then being able to relax a little bit during the day wasn’t necessarily a good thing – when we all arrived at the office it felt like it took longer than usual to get back into our stride, and before we knew it it was ‘lunchtime’ (11.30) and we’d only just finished the toilet scenes. The location was great though – finally having some space to spread out felt really good, but then maybe that – and the fact that we’re coming to the end of the shoot – gave the whole night a bit of a half-term feel.

I thought when we first arrived that I wasn’t going to be able to last through the night – I was so knackered today, and couldn’t lie in as long as I wanted to – but the more we went on, the more the adrenalin kicked back in, and by the time we had lunch, it felt more like a normal day again.

Then problems started to kick in – it started getting light in the windows behind the actors, making it really difficult to make it look like nighttime – the problem hampered by the fact that the camera – which had been playing up a bit all night – suddenly decided it didn’t want to work on the batteries, so we had to track down a mains power source, meaning that the last shot we did is going to require some grading in post to make it match.

By that time everybody was flagging anyway – I looked up to frame a shot at one point and saw Olga lying on the floor half-asleep – so we wrapped ten minutes early – then me, Jonathan and Andrew had a chat about the schedule for tomorrow – when we really need it to get darker quicker and lighter later, or, more realistically, to work a lot faster than we did tonight. Will force-feed everybody coffee when they arrive, maybe