The Lonliness of The Outdoor Filmmaker

As we are getting closer and closer to the Pilot being done and dusted, once again the perils of filming on location have come to my attention and the reasons why some directors prefer interior shoots to exteriors more apparent.

 

First is of course the general public of which we are all a part. The number of times we have had to stop and answer question upon question asked about what we are doing.

The best question being, of course: "Are you filming?"
I do wonder what gave it away! The camera and microphone, perhaps?
And, my personal favourite, “Can we be in it?"
So, a word of advise people, if you see some on the street filming please LEAVE THEM ALONE as they most likely have a lot to do and not as much time as they would like to do it.
One more thing about the general public is walking into shot and ruining the whole of the take. Look around WILL ya and just wait them few extra minutes until we shout "CUT!"
PLEASE. (*Sob*)

The second is the weather, now I know there’s not a lot I can do about the weather as it’s
the weather and it will do what ever it wants to do, whether we like it or not. It still does cause some problems like going too dark and suddenly (or in some cases constantly) raining, which means we have to keep having to organise reshoot of things we’ve already done. Don't get me started on sudden gusts of wind and vulnerable pieces of set dressing!

Then again sometimes it can help you out, like on a windy day which did make the costumes flap in a cool and groovy way on film. This in turn helped out in the editing room. You’ll all see soon enough.

And the last one is of course: location, location, location.
Now we’ve been over this before but it has gotten worse as we are filming. I mean trying to find, say,  a multi-story car for instance - should be easy, right? Right. Wrong!
The one we had our hearts set on using for a couple of things cannot be accessed due to it being rented by a big company here in Halifax. We tried to get in contact but are still awaiting an answer weeks later. So a new car park had to be found, fortunately we have found a replacement - however it requires a fair bit of travel out of our way to get there (but it'll be worth it). And one final note is the shepping (or substituting) locations for other (fictional) ones. This is always fun and hard to find, sometimes you do get lucky as we have for one of the exteriors but this has it’s own perils like being on a busy street or somewhere you have to get try in and out like the SAS. All in all if nobody dies you can consider it a successful shoot.

Well, that’s the end of this blog against perils, along with set of rules we put in a previous blog you too should be able to enjoy successfully filming out on location as we have. If you only remember one thing remember this: if you unavoidably, absolutely have to kill a member of the public - make sure to dispose of the body discreetly in a location it is not likely to be discovered.

TTFN

Vernon Harcourt