Beyond Silence: week 11, days 6 and 7(last two days) of Principal photography/shooting. 4/05/2023.

Introduction

After a good day's rest from the past days of shooting, we decided to get the last few scenes of the project done, so that Aaron would be able to get us an assembly draft as soon as possible. For these two scenes, we only need the black belt match for the home video which would be overlayed with the footage of Lucy, Zach, and Robert watching the match. We also needed a couple of minutes of footage of Zach texting Lucy that he was in the car park nearby. Overall, the shoots took us a couple of hours for both, which was very rewarding and easier on the cast and crew.

Day 6 Shooting the black belt match at the University of Lincoln sports center. Monday 24th April.

Before we started filming on the day, we took a couple of hours in the morning for Aaron to practice Kickboxing with Owen as the black belt opponent who kicks (pretends to) Liv as Lucy in the face during the home video match. For this, we practiced outside my accommodation, as well as making sure he was safe at all times performing the kick.

Despite being a bit nervous and not used to the style of kickboxing, Owen picked it up really well to the point that even Aaron was impressed with his progress. After a couple more times, we gave him a break as we got the gear ready to go. I also texted the rest of the crew and the extras for the shoot as well.

?Show time!

The main crew arrived early around 14:45 pm, as we waited for the extras to arrive. For this, I had asked some of the members of Lincoln Central alive church to help us out as extras along with my roommate Mason, and Liv's boyfriend (due to personal reasons I will not disclose the names of those apart from Owen and Mason who helped us due to the rest of the extras wanting to remain anonymous).

Once everyone was here, we got to the sports hall and got all the gym mats set up for the fight as Owen got changed into his black belt attire for the match. It took us half an hour to set up and about 20 minutes to get the camera and audio equipment ready.

We first started with Mason signaling Liv and Owen, which they then would move into their fighting positions. For this we went handheld for the majority of the shoot, using wide lenses from sitting down on the audience seats to emphasize the cheapness and the shakiness of the home video.

After getting some footage of their stances, we moved into the kick and the reaction of the audience to it. We made sure to tell Owen to only go close to the height and for Liv to fall over just as his foot was in the air so that the illusion of her being kicked was still there. During this segment, we ran into some issues with panning the camera as due to Luke's stature, he found it hard to pan the camera in time with Owen kicking in the air.

After a few times, and our time slot nearly being over, Aaron took over the camera for this scene, which allowed us to get the scene with a couple of good takes. On the day I also noticed that the sound was very echoing and because there were a lot of people in the dance studio it did cause me to have to turn up the audio recorder in order to get clear sounds.

Then we moved on to doing some wide shots of Mason going over to Liv's side and Owen then jumping around all victorious from the first contact, which only took us a couple of his takes. Once that was completed, we took a bit of a break as Hester (our producer) used her makeup skills to give Liv some facial bruising and make it look like she had been in a fight. After that, we moved on to doing some POV shots of Lucy looking up at Owen as well as some wide shots of her getting back up ready to do more fighting with Owen.

After that was completed and all the video footage for the day was done, I ask Liv to fall down without the camera in order to get cleaner audio of her hitting the ground for Aaron to sync up in the edit. I ask Liv to do it a couple of times, due to the amount of noise in the sports hall and wanting to make sure Aaron had some decent sound to work from.

With our time up and everything else practically finished for the day, we wrapped up production and said thank you and farewell to all the extras who agreed to help us out on the day.

Day 7 Last day of Principal photography/shooting at Hykeham train station, Tuesday 25th April.

With only one last scene to do, On Tuesday 25th April, we made our way over to the car park at the Hykeham train station to film our last scene of Zack in the car receiving Lucy's texts about him being not too far away from the train station. ?For this we just had the car parked in a parking space with Aaron and Zach in the car.

For this scene, we had a few issues with the shooting as we could only shoot from the front and the driver's side of the car, due to the door handle on Liv's car being broken and because it was seen in the previous footage of the car arriving and parking at Aaron house, we had to only shot from the driver side. Furthermore, the sun was incredibly bright on the day, which made it incredibly hard for both Luke and I to correctly expose the camera even when we swapped out the ND filters and polarisers the image was not fully exposed.

To resolve this, we tried changing the camera settings, as we brought it down to the lowest recommended 1600 Iso, and change the white balance to one of the other white balance settings. Luckily once the clouds blocked out the sun, it made became easier for me and Luke to correctly expose the shot without changing the settings.

We first decided to film at the front of the vehicle, with both a 50mm and 85mm camera lens to give a really closer shot of Aaron in the car. For this, we needed to use the grass area in front of the car, as the extra height and the space gave it the perfect place to put the camera.?Due to Luke being unable to stand on the grass due to balance issues, I had to take over the camera, with our Producer Hester holding the tripod. I did a couple of takes uses both in order to give Aaron a wide variety of takes for him to choose from.

After I got the footage I needed, we then moved the camera and the tripod to the corner of the car park where I did some establishing shots with wide angles of a 24mm lens to get a good feel of the car and the location. The only issue I found was that the sun kept coming in and out which did ruin the exposure a bit but also because of how bright it was on the day, it made the atmosphere not match up with Lucy's scenes from the train station in Peterborough.

After a couple of takes and tries I was able to get the camera correctly exposed and got the footage recorded. After we had all the shots we wanted, I uploaded the rest of the footage to my hard drive, and then we pack up and left the car park ending our last day of principal photography.

Conclusion?

Overall, this project has been both a joy and a nightmare to do at the same time from actors dropping out last minute, to the weather being inconsistent at times of shooting, the stress and fatigue of traveling a lot, and the overwhelming sense of everything hitting us all at once and feeling like we were not going to make it.

It has been an incredibly tough few months, weeks, and days going out and filming in these conditions with the cast and crew working the hardest they ever worked to get this done. Despite the setbacks and issues, we have risen against the odds and prevailed and managed to film this on time without too much fault.

Before I continue, I just want to thank Owen, Mason, Liv’s boyfriend, and everyone from Alive Lincoln central church that helped us out as extras for the black belt scene. ?I also want to thank Tanfia Lefevre Cas, and Peter for being involved in our project and being the most amazing people involved with this production. I also want to thank Emily Jane Matthews and Darren Wong (Darren) for helping us out with the camera and for volunteering your free time for the project, you both were amazing, and we were incredibly lucky to have you on set. I also want to thank everyone who has donated and supported the project from the background, we all appreciate it.

Foremost and Finally I just want to thank my hard work and incredibly talented crew members: Aaron Cadwallader , Luke Smith , Olivia Cookson , and HaoHsin Shih /Hester who despite everything that went wrong with this project, pushed through, and supported each other along the way, there is no crew that I would want more than you guys and I have been incredibly lucky and fortunate to work with you all and so proud of how, no matter what we all stuck together and gave it our best shot.

Thank you, everyone, for the effort you all have made in this project, without you this project would not have taken off, and incredibly lucky to know you all.?Please when you get the chance rest and celebrate the accomplishments we made throughout this project.

For more information on the project, stay tune for my last article with post-production, and follow us on social media for more updates.