Filming: Day One

Kate slept over at my house, and after getting up at 7:30 (ON A SATURDAY) we got ready to go. We got to the city at 9:30, and walked to the location on the Yarra River, for the “river’s a bed now” scene. We had difficulty filming, because there were pedestrians and joggers along the bank in the background of our shot, and rowing boats on the river. We had to keep waiting for a clear way to shoot, it was a bit frustrating, especially because if we had filmed on another day there wouldn’t have been many (if any) boats.

After filming for about half an hour, we packed up and walked across to the Royal Botanical Gardens. Behind the Sidney Myer Music Bowl was a gazebo, and that was the next location for the “none of the sunlight is safe” scene. There weren’t many people around, so after setting up a wrecked picnic rug and some rubbish we filmed for about 40 minutes.

After that we caught a tram to Melbourne Central for lunch.

Once we had finished eating, I checked Google maps to make sure we knew where Finlay Lane was, it was only a 5 minute walk away, so we went over there. Once we got there we discovered there was some kind of construction or road works going on right where we had intended to film. A construction worker saw us and told us we could wait an hour or two and they would be finished, but I wasn’t sure if he was right or not and I didn’t want to waste time, so I decided we should just come home and shoot the hospital scene instead.

We caught the train home and then began setting up. We moved all the furniture around in my lounge room, deconstructed my bed, carried the parts downstairs and reconstructed it. Then we used some blue curtains and hung them up next to the bed, we had a bit of trouble with that, we needed to take the curtains off the rail because they kept slipping off the nails in the wall, so we threaded string through them and tied it up. I printed out the family photos that I’d taken the day before and put the fake flowers with them on a table next to the bed.

The hospital scene probably took about 2 hours all up, because there was so much setting up (and then unpacking) to do.

But overall today went well, and I think I am on track to get all the filming done by the end of Tuesday.