Unawakened is the first project that I have ever directed. Although I’m a first-time film director, I’ve been on several sets, both professional and student, and I’ve learned and grown with each one. Each one has a different environment and different way of operating, and each one is useful in different ways. On each set I learned a little more about what it meant to take on my role – whether it be a production assistant, a boom-operator, or a casting director. This set wasn’t any different. It may seem weird that you learn how to be a director when you are a director, but there’s really no other way. You often don’t know what something is like until you do it, and directing was no different. As much as I had prepared and anticipated the day that was to come, I still had no idea what I was getting myself in to.
(Seeing my name on the slate was thrilling - and made everything feel so much more real)
The first day on set was terrifying. I didn’t sleep well the night before. I was worried that my actors weren’t going to show up, that my crew wouldn’t show up, that I would be missing equipment, something would break, that all the footage would be lost - essentially that the set would fall apart under my watch. None of this happened. Thankfully. Nevertheless, the possibility of it happening kept me up at night. But even though I was terrified out of my mind, I was equal parts excited as well. This was my project, my vision, that was coming to life. And everyone on set was here to make it happen. It was given an incredible opportunity and it turned into an incredible experience.
That didn’t make the first few moments on set any less terrifying. The crew started to file in and my nerves and jitters started to wear away little by little. The actors started to file in about an hour in after that. I took a few deep breathes. I could do this, I just needed to find my footing. By the third take, I had started to find that footing. I started to get into the groove of calling “Action!” and “Cut!” at their appropriate times (there are some takes that have an awkward amount of time after the scene has ended because I forgot I had to say “Cut!” for the camera to stop rolling). But overall, I became more confident in what I was doing, and I was ready to lead this crew. After all, if I didn’t, no one else was. Talk about a pressure-free job.
(A fraction of the equipment that was stored in my apartment)
Despite it being a turbulent pre-production process, the filming process itself went quite smoothly. We finished filming early every day, and there were no major mishaps. The true testament of the weekend, though, would come when we played back the footage. There were a few tricky shots that were filmed. The most complicated? A forced super-imposed shot in which we had to time up two distinct shots. This meant: the camera couldn’t move. The lighting couldn’t change. And the actors had to time their dialogue so that the two scenes, when played over one another, lined up.
The stakes were high. We wouldn’t know if this fancy trick of a camera worked until we played back the footage. If the timing was wrong, we would have to re-film the same scene that had taken two hours to set up and film. My cameraman and DPs took the footage and played it back in Premiere, Adobe’s non-linear editing system. I waited, patiently, to see if I got the go ahead from DPs – that we could move on and that the shot had worked. I busied myself with other things – there’s always something to do on a film set. A few minutes later, Mireille walked over to me.
“It’s going to work.”
I sighed a big sigh of relief. The timing worked. The footage looked great. Everything had gone smoothly. With one weekend tackled and one to go, I felt good about where we were.
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