Final Shoot. What!?

We're here, we made it! We planned our final shoot date with the final two scenes for Saturday, July 14th, 2012, and coming up to that date it was an amazing feeling knowing we were about to wrap production and just focus on editing and promotion... but an actress called up sick the morning of the shoot and it was cancelled :( We moved the final shoot to Sunday, July 29th – that was the next common available day for cast and crew. 

Well what a way to end the series. The morning of the shoot, I get a message from our D.O.P - “I hate to be THAT guy, but I'm sick. I can't make it”. First internal reaction - “NOOOOOOOOOO” haha We're so close to finishing! What to do? I tell the actresses that it may be cancelled but not if I could help it! I message around to close friends in the early morning to see if anyone can help at late notice that has a camera. An hour goes by, no responses. But I figured that because it was still early. I decide... I will film on my iPhone! Bit crazy right? But desperate times call for desperate measures. And yes, I could have just rescheduled with everyone but what if that was then cancelled and the series never got finished?

Two things made it impossible for the shoot to not go ahead:

1) New release dates had just been planned and we'd have to change them and it would ruin the concept we had going for the series, but more importantly

2) the house we film at had been sold over the past weeks and this was our last chance to film before all the furniture was moved out. And for continuity purposes, it wouldn't be good to randomly change the exterior and interior of the main characters house... Could look a bit weird. So the girls showed up two hours after first scheduled and in that time, a friend came through and gave me her spare video camera. Thanks to Lauran (check her link at the end) our shoot went ahead not having to resort to my iPhone's camera.

The two final scenes involved all 3 lead cast members but recently, Brianna, got a contract with a company to be the face of their brand, which requires her to travel to Brisbane every week for 12 months to work on TVC, web media and print campaigns. Swamped with her new job (Congrats Bri!), we had to change the scenes so her character wasn't in it. So Hannah and Shanna did the two final scenes by themselves. Let me give you the set up for the final shoot. There was a total of three people; two actresses and the director - No D.O.P/camera Op and no sound recorder. The director would film one actress while the other actress stood in the scene holding the boom mic. The director became D.O.P and the actresses became the sound recorders! I can safely say that all three main actresses in the series have acted as a sound recorder at some point within the production. What an experience this has been! With filming over, we have scheduled a photo shoot for the girls (in hopes it will be ready by the time the official trailer is released).

Bye for now!

(Shanna during a scene today)

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