Her child actor, Guy Abrahams, was adorable and after his mother informed us that this was his first acting job, we were all shocked as he was a great wee actor and took direction very well! Guy, playing the role of Oscar, and the father character, Peter (real name Pete Ramsey), had a great connection and after brief introductions they were thrown straight in to the exterior scenes of Guy running up to Peter and hugging him. You instantly felt the father-son connection between them both and they worked brilliantly together.

 

In terms of storyline and relate-ability to her audience, I felt Steph kept it very realistic to the British class system and majority of the populations life situations with the working class family/father, prospect of divorce or parental split and shared custody of the child, as well as the public school education. Her level of realism in her location, set dressing, characters and costume has all been given some thought by Steph and I commemorate her and her planning for each aspect of her film for sure!

 

For some of the exterior shots outside the school I ended up trying to pitch in anywhere I could, both to help out and to keep my mind of the chilly winds. I then stepped in assisting Guilemito (english name of William) and David 'Weathers' Kazadi with the Jib set-up and then standing in as a boom operator helping the sound recordist, Kali Byrne. We thought we timed it well enough for kids to be in class but turns out not quite the case when classes of kids rotated for their breaks so had kids constantly outside trying to get our attention and ruining some sound recordings yelling "Hey, you guys! What you filming? Film me, I'll be your next star", leaving us sound team not best impressed. Other than that the shots both with the jib and in the car turned out to work very well with William on the Canon C100 and David as the DOP. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I was shown the room we were shooting in my first thought was 'Ut Oh' due to the lack of space and amount of crew and equipment required to be in the room. After accessing the situation and location I went for simplicity, and after discussion with David we both decided for it to look as natural as we could for the time of day required. This involved closing off all light that was coming through the doors and windows, as well as the lighting coming from the front door in to the coridoor outside of the room. The way I achieved this was by using two 650W lights bouncing off the ceiling and one additional 300W aimed against the unseen wall in the room to give a fill light of the room and combatting the sinister looking light on the characters faces. Outside the room when the father enters I used the remaining 800W light from our Superkit, faced it against the door and then wedged a reflector in between the walls to hold it up and bounce the soft light back in to the coridoor and on the father, giving it more of a natural day time feel.