Monday 5 December 2011

Photo shoot Mark 2....!

Last Wednesday, we had another session at Tower Bridge Studios to shoot some stills for “Clowning Around”. We did do a previous session in July, where we captured images of the protagonist Bonzo, as well as three supporting roles so we

However, shortly before the shoot, the actor playing Bonzo withdrew from the role and we re-cast David Schaal and with such little time to prepare, we focused on the shoot and then after a short break, contacted both David and the studio again to see if we could arrange a few hours to put him on the poster. could show the visual ambition of the project to IndieGoGo backers and so we could finalise ideas on costume, makeup and the overall colour pallette.

The planning itself for the shoot was a lot simpler than last time (or so you would think) as we only needed half a dozen crew and had all the designs and equipment to make it happen, and all this had been tried and tested in both the stills and film shoot.

However, the reality is that after some intense shooting of the film, people had moved on to other projects, so bringing them back in and motivating them in the same way was more challenging. Whereas before we were heading towards production and the creative side was still being explored, this was more of a functional session with momentum heading into post production. Add to this that this time of year is very busy for freelancers and it makes t very difficult for people to commit free time. Over the course of the 10 days planning for the shoot, a complete crew dropped out twice and with just under 36 hours left to the shoot, I had only asst producer Juliet and proucer Leilani on board still! Luckily, even if people couldn’t help, they tried to find someone who could, so we managed to get photographer Bruno Figuerido, gaffer Ian Jones, costume designer Karmjit Kalla and make up artist Annie Popplewell onto the project with very little notice!

What this experience did remind me was not to panic. Things go wrong, and all you can do is try your best with the cards you are dealt. Plus, it is always reassuring to know you can get around what feels like completely unrealistic obstacles J

The shoot itself presented a couple of problems in that, whereas last time we had the larger studio and a lot more lights, this time it was being used by another company (and as we were using for free couldn’t really complain!) so we had to improvise a bit. Also, whereas the previous Bonzo had Matthew Jure (Mr. Fernelli) to bounce off, David had to work harder for the same effect as he was on his own.

Despite this, we managed to get more than enough images (unfortunately however no video) so we can finalise our poster and artwork and feel like we can finally move into post production. We also found time to meet up with some of the crew from the film shoot later on at the pub :-)