Day two of My Name is John filming! We are doing the corner shop and also the self help group. Our biggest issue today was snow and I was faced to make a decision on the morning if the shoot was still going ahead. After a few messages to see how bad the snow was, I decided to make the shoot go ahead, but change the call time to 10. To make things easier, I got a train to Middlesbrough (my bus was late and I luckily caught it just in time) so the driver could avoid the A19 (which was closed both ways).
Getting hold of a corner shop was the trickiest part of pre-production as no one was willing to help us out in Hartlepool. Luckily I know someone who owns a car showroom near Middlesbrough which also has a little shop! It was quite 'in the middle of nowhere' but everyone managed to arrive okay.
I also had issues getting actors to location or just dropping out in general for "just a few lines", so I messaged the owner in advance to see if anyone would be up for it. The actual shopkeeper was very keen and was quite good on camera! He looked at camera a few times too by accident which worked in our favour as it looks like he's wondering why the crew is filming him. An actual customer stopped John during a take as he dropped a pack of cards (I wish we got this on camera but I don't think we did!) which was quite funny! We also had a few people asking if we were filming (um yes, the camera probably gave that away).
For the exterior shots, we got a group of lads who chose between themselves who would be on camera and laugh at whoever it was to distract them. We did a few takes, one subtle, one obvious so we could choose which works better. I'm also happy the actor didn't read the actors contract thoroughly and realise he was playing an 'Old Lady'.
We finished earlier than anticipated, we bought a few things just to say thanks, and headed off to Hartlepool to set up the self help group. I did put out a status asking for actors but we ended up having to get a level 4 and level 6's (would have liked some older extras but beggars can't be choosers, just hope we are luckier with extras on Monday!) We tried a static shot for safety but it didn't look good nor go well, so we stuck to handheld for both scenes. Scene 1 worked very well and it is the funniest moment we have shot, a pan from John to the unimpressed self help group. I had this shot in my head for a while and I talk about the planning and why it's so effective here. I'm very proud with how it turned out in the end, this required some pull focusing but we did a few takes to make sure we got it. Again, we were done way ahead of schedule (luckily we were as the fire alarm went off five minutes after I signed John out).
Looking back at the footage, the opening shot needs some work, so I have added a pick up shot of John walking into the self help group (pan from this to a poster) for Monday.
We also had a bit of a scare on Friday when the card wouldn't work on a computer without formatting. Luckily it was fixed (I could have cried happy tears), and I think we have figured out that it was formatted incorrectly so we can stop it happening again.
Sadly we don't have any stills from today as it was quite a skeleton crew from the snow.
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