An Epic Tale of an Epic Tale

by

Anna Littler

(click on images to see them full size)

PART 2 – The Bickley shoot

At our latest big shoot in Bickley we had about 50 people involved during the course of the day, including c 25 extras and actors (aged 2 to c 87) including a number of ladies who were treated like royalty in the beautiful 1930s cars!

Due to some of the main actors only being available in the morning, we had to film a lot of the footage out of sequence and do lots of the cutaways in the afternoon. Scheduling and planning for all these clips was quite taxing and despite a huge amount of preparation, we still missed filming a number of shots. We have since had to return to get these cutaways, without which the finale would not have made sense!

Another problem with having to film the cutaways (or half a conversation) later in the day was the fact that the weather kept changing from overcast to bright sunshine to rain!

Continuity can be a big headache! People’s hairstyles can change throughout the day, or they forget to put their gloves on or which hand they had their handbag in! (Or, like me, they wear their 1930’s hat the wrong way round!).

On some days we’ve been good at doing continuity photos – getting quick snaps of actors, props and sets – by using a simple digital camera which stores the photos for easy reference later on. At other times we’ve failed to get the photo we needed and we’ve had to hope for the best! But this can make editing much harder! (So if you join me for any of our remaining little shoots (for ‘pick ups’) and no one is snapping away (other than the professional Photographer Simon), please ask where my digital camera is – please!! I cannot stress the importance of such photos – it’s one of the most useful lessons I’ve learned! N.B. If you’ve a day between shoots, you can print photos from the film footage.

Lots of Simon’s fab photos can now be seen on: www.facebook.com/blitzandbananas

Part 1 of the Blitz And Bananas story can be found HERE

Part 2 can be found HERE

Part 4 can be found HERE

Thanks again for everything! Anna annahopelittler@yahoo.co.uk