Week One

As I write this I'm sitting in the production office we've set up in the basement of our first location. In an hour Tom will be coming over and we'll be shifting everything over to location number two. It's quiet being here alone – quite a different feeling from what it's been like over the last six days. The first week of our shoot has flown by in a flurry. We started with perhaps the two most ambitious days of our schedule. Day one consisted of six scenes in seven locations, and day two was five exterior scenes, all of which were covered in single, continuous Steadicam shots. It was a tough start, not helped by the heavy rain on Tuesday afternoon. But we got there, and we worked through our issues. On Wednesday evening we shot the film's ending – also exterior – and luckily the weather held (as late as last week they were predicting snow, so I have to admit I was pretty worried for a while...). On Thursday we settled properly into the location, but we had a couple of tracking shots which slowed us down and which, naturally, brought their own problems with them. On Friday and Saturday we hit our stride and had our best two days. I'm very excited by the footage we got. Our biggest issue this week has been sound, largely due to the flight path over the location, and time has been tight. The schedule and budget we have dictate that we have to shoot quick. In some ways it's nice as I like to work fast and it keeps the momentum going, but time is always the greatest premium on a film set, and an extra few hours here and there would not have been missed. But luckily for me the entire crew has been extremely hard working and made it happen. We've run a little late a couple of times, but everyone has shown great patience and understanding and there's a real community vibe on set. The cast has been fantastic, both on and off screen. They're a great bunch of people and they've delivered some truly spell-binding performances so far. I'm very touched by the dedication to the project that the entire cast and crew have shown this week, and I'm looking forward to continuing the shoot tomorrow (but not so excited about the location move this afternoon...).

- Alex