Two Months On Set: Producing a Student Film
The weather did hold up, and we were underway.
Our second-to-last weekend was exhausting. On Friday, we were on-set from 4 pm until midnight. The following day, we were on the set from 6 am until 1 am with a two-hour break in the afternoon. On top of that, we had twenty extras on-set, half of them were kids. Wardrobe for all those extras was a headache. And communication and tempers remained the same as usual.
With the help of coffee and energy drinks (I’ve officially initiated), we got our dawn shots amidst swathes of fog. Our poor actors had to sit in the frigid stream without shivering. Then came the midmorning shots with all the extras dressed as pilgrims traveling through the sun-bathed valley. In the evening, we got a couple of shots more in the river. After waiting on the costumes to come out of a dryer, we finished the day shooting a battle scene in the mud. A masked creature circled and attacked one of our characters, while Stephen shot everything handheld, slipping around in the thick, cold sludge. Fortunately, this last shoot was far more peaceable than the rest of the day had been. Maybe we were all eager to get done and go home.
And so wrapped that long weekend.
Our final weekend on set was good.
The week leading up to it, not so much.
The preparation was nightmarish. Sleep deprivation was at its worst. Our dwindling time kept driving our stress ever higher. Tempers kept flaring. It promised to be the worst weekend yet. But by Friday afternoon, we’d somehow gotten our heads in gear.
There was a lot of production design, which meant more time for setup and between shots. There was a beast to construct and behead for multiple takes and a battle scene to shoot by firelight. Oh, and the firewood was damp. So, between fueling the dinky flames with Germ-ex, putting the head back on the monster time and again, and smearing fake blood on actors, the pacing on set was overall slower than it had been before. Yet, somehow, we got all the footage we needed and were able to leave before our pre-set wrap time. And we were able to do it with friendly interactions.
The next day was a simple setup in the middle of a field using the afternoon light. We had no cables, hardly any production design, one actor, no equipment other than a camera, a tripod, and a flag for the character to raise, Iwo Jima style.
In the pink light of dusk, we supped Italian food that night in celebration of a second good day. Good communication. Good attitudes. Good progress. Good footage.
The final day was split in two.
In the morning, we drove out to a lake, where we got a shot of a masked beast on a cliff edge and a dream sequence at the foot of a bluff. The fog machine made an appearance again, this time without catching on fire. There was conflict at the start of the shoot that left me as Assistant Director for the remainder of the day, but after that, things went smoothly.
That evening, came the grandest scene of all: the climactic battle between our hero and the beast. We hazed a grove of trees, lighting it with an artificial moonlight and lit a giant burn pile. The beast emerged from the shadows with mist swirling around its cloaked figure, white light outlining him against the dark. A battle ensued, and after our beast nearly fell in the fire, the hero victors.
We had to get a few other minor scenes in a hurry, with only an hour to spare. I don’t know how we did it, but we got about twenty shots at that time. Everyone lept into action, and I hardly had to do anything as Assistant Director, since everyone stayed on task beautifully. We finished by 1 am. The call “That’s a wrap on Beneath One Oath” wrung only a weak little “yay” from our weary selves, and we tore everything down in record time.
It was freezing out, by that point, and I couldn’t stop my shivering. And I still had at least two or three hours of homework ahead of me. But we were finished. After two months, filming was finally over. And we had been able to enjoy set the last weekend.
Currently, I’m back to being a regular student, more or less. I know the editing team is working like crazy to finish the film, and I empathize with their busyness. But I’m excited to see the results of our labor in a couple of weeks at the screening. For now, I’ll focus on getting my grades up.
