After the storyboard was signed off, the first thing we had to do was find string musicians, as this was not a capability we had in-house. So, I scoured the papers, packed a sandwich, and went to see a solo cello concert, and approached the cellist during the interval. He agreed to meet me for lunch, which, despite the sandwiches I agreed to. And I felt he would be perfect.
The next big challenge was finding a date which suited the crew, the musicians, as well as the locations we wanted. Once that date was finalised, we had to squeeze in a recording date before the shoot, which meant finding a gap in the recording studio that suited everyone’s schedule . Of course, the score had to be done beforehand, and as is usually the way, the score took much longer than anticipated, so we had to reschedule the recording and shooting date twice!
After the music was recorded and mixed, the timing of the storyboard had to be reworked, as the music was the driving force of the story and didn’t obey the estimated timing on the original storyboard.
The first day of shooting was in an Irish pub, and was particularly challenging, because of the lighting, the set up of which took 70 % of the day. Twelve lights and a fog machine were well managed – but it took time. Many extras on standby were growing impatient. Some enjoyed chatting to each other. Others just got hungry. The musicians managed to entertain themselves by rehearsing.
The footage from the Irish pub shoot allowed me to plan the next day of shooting, which had to take place at three different locations. These shots were a lot less time consuming to set up. The first one was outdoors. We relied on natural light and the simple use of a reflector. We had to rush through those shots, so we could get to the next location (a techno club) on time, where 10 Extras, the DJ and a technical manager were waiting. These shots were a breeze to set up compared to the shoot at the Irish pub because they had a mixing desk which controlled several different lights as well as a fog machine. The last location of the day was in a very spacious industrial apartment. We could take our time to set up the lights as we didn’t have to be anywhere else and the stylist could take her time making the styling perfect.
Overall, I was happy with how things went and there were a lot of great shots to choose from in the editing suite.
We ended up with two very different versions, one at about 3 minutes in length, and one at about 90 seconds. It was not a simple case of just “cutting” the longer one – the whole flow had to be re-arranged and the music with it. But it worked.
You can see a still stack of the shoot here.