Sunday, 17 June 2012

Shoot 2

Our second shoot took place on Friday, June 8, 2012. It was a beautiful day outside but majority of the scenes took place indoors, set in the school's library. For this shoot our 1st AD/assistant, Keelin, (from our first shoot) was promoted to sound recorder/boom operator. Keelin joins the WKJL team to gain set experience. I hope we are helping teach her the basic fundamentals of a film production.

This week we had one guest actor with us - Neda. We had two actresses pull out the day before filming, which was unfortunate, but luckily we could rearrange our filming schedule and film scenes that only required our lead actresses.

The day ended behind schedule (do film shoots ever run on time?) but we got our shots! Now comes the task of rescheduling to accommodate the scenes we couldn't do. Maybe an additional shoot day is required.

Bye for now!

(Keelin, Brianna and Hannah on set in the library)
 
Who Killed Jessica Lane?

Sunday, 10 June 2012

Filming has begun!


On Friday, June 1, 2012, we kicked off our first shoot for the new Aussie web series, Who Killed Jessica Lane? #WKJL?

The weather had been overcast and raining most of that week but it was very good to us on Friday with not one drop of rain! This was extremely fortunate since all our scenes for that day were filmed outside on location.

We had three guest actors, Matthew, Jessica and Scott, film their scenes with our lead character, Ruby. It was a dialogue driven day for our actress, Hannah, who plays Ruby. Everyone did amazing in their roles – and inside trivia, we never had the actors audition! It is risky choosing actors based on pure look, but due to time constraints (production wise) that is what we decided to do. We believe no matter how great or little the training of an actor, they can always give a great performance within a scene if instructed by a great director in terms of line delivery and intention. I guess we'll let you decide if it worked or not once you see the webisodes! Everyone worked well on set and had previously contacted us wanting to know more about their character and plot within the series. They were committed and reliable which was a great help to our production.

Later in the day, we had our two other lead actresses, Brianna and Shanna, join us on set, along with, Sophie, who acts as the face of Jessica Lane. (No episodes have been written in season one of WKJL where Jessica appears, so you might never know what Jessica was actually like. Unless there is a flashback episode on the cards... Stay tuned!) The girls all huddled around each other taking group shots and one on ones to help form the back story and future props for the show.

The WKJL production has a minimal crew. We've only planned on shooting with a director, camera operator/D.O.P, sound recorder/boom operator and and 1st A.D/assistant (due to filming mostly on week days and full time work making it hard for others to help). Unfortunately our boom mic operator never showed up without warning so the director stepped up and divided his time between directing and sound as best he could. We should take this moment to let all of you know who read this that WKJL has NO budget. Everyone is giving up their time and hard effort for free and we use all our own resources as best we can, trying to film on common spare days within our busy part time work schedules. We have scheduled 4 shoots within the month of June to film all scenes for the 15 webisodes. We'll wait and see how we go.

Time was pushed and we did run over but we are thankful for the weather and the great actors! One last thank you goes to 'Giovanni' who assisted as our second camera op/D.O.P for half the day.

Bye for now!


Who Killed Jessica Lane?