LOGBOOK

LOGBOOK

GROUP:

Dirk, Faith & Grace

STORY:

We decided to go with what we thought a simple storyline of a girl who misreads sign on her way to work in order to tell a story of a girl who thinks badly of herself. She thinks of herself as a failure and many other things until one day a man walks into her work place and shows her a little bit of love. After she had been shown a bit of kindness and love she starts to see things in a different light and stops misreading sings as she previously did, in a negative way but in a positive way, this show she is thinking better of herself and all she needed is love.

PROCESS:

We didn't go into this project very prepared, we sat down and discussed what we would need for props but didn't organise specifically who would do what. Dirk offered to shoot for us so we went with that and i offered to second shoot but he didn't want me to(which i regret not doing because on every production team and every shoot there are at least two cameras, i believe we could have had more shots to play with if i had been camera number two). 

Other than who was shooting we didn't plan who would do what. We looked for  actors for about a week until Dirks brother and sister said they would act for us. 

I got all the official forms printed for the shoot and designed and printed most of the props(except for two that Dirk said he would design) Fait said she would fill out the paper work for our team, which she did a great job with. 

Next we had to shoot, but our schedules kept clashing so eventually we got to shoot on the 22 April, shoot time was 7.30. Dirk was going to use his girlfriends car to fetch his sister at 6am. 

22 April. Tuesday

Call Time 7.30am

Location: Street

Days Mission: Walking Shots

5ma i wake up, get dressed and ready. Leave the house at 5.20 get to cape town at 6am try to contact dirk but no response, wait in my car outside his house until 6.30. He said he had overslept. I get into the car with him and we go to Claremont, fetch his sister and head back to his place, we hit traffic on the way back. So we become late. Get back to dirks place, he has to fetch his camera and other things. I realize i dont have the script. So we go into the first shoot late and unprepared. 

Arrive and meed Faith at 8.15. Shoot what we can(mainly walking shots). Realize we don't have a change of clothes for our main actress so she takes my coat and scarf. Faith had to go to her internship so she left at 8.30 but by then we had finished most of our work we. We carried on for about another fifteen minuets and by 8.45 we are finished our first days shoot. We then decided to get permission and look for library’s to shoot at because originally we wanted our actress to work at a library. so we visited a few in Cape Town but they all wanted us to pay for a pass and we didn't have any budget. 

We left for Dirks house around 9.30. i dropped everyone off and headed to Navigator Films to get the posters(some of our props) printed. By the endif today Dirk said he was going to do the editing for the team. 

25 April . Friday

Call Time 8am

Location: Street, Bus Stop, Bus

Days Mission: End off walking shots & shoot on a bus

5am i wake up, get dressed and ready, Leave the house at 5.30 get to Cape Town and Dirs house at 6.10. Call Dirk he gets into my car and we go get his sister in Claremont get back to Dirks house at 6.45. Wait at dirks house. at 7.30 we realise its too dark to shoot at 8am so Dirk texts Faith and lets her know to wait at her apartment until 8.30. At 8.30 we get into my car and head to the bus stop. We arrive around 8.40am

We put up our posters and begin to shoot. We begin to acquire an audience which Faith and i get a bit scared of and for the gear but Dirk tells us not to worry. So we keep shooting and out for the blue! A random homeless man walks up into our scene, grabs our new and expensive Cape Times replacer, off the street lamp and stuffs it into the bin below! Our audience go ballistic! they start to scream and shout at this man, we start shouting and the man just walks off. So our audience grab our poster and nicely help put it back. We carry on shooting but also realise we need to get on a bus soon because otherwise we are going to run out of busses. We finish up and head to the station. Dirk gets some distance shots and then we get onto the bus. Get the shots we need there and back. We got onto a very nice new bus that lookd like a tourist bus and on our way back we worried we would have to shoot on a normal but but we were in luck because one of the last busses going back into Cape Town was exactly like the one we had just shot on. By 9.10am we were finished and headed to class just in time for lectures. 

21 April. Sunday

Call Time: 3pm

Location: Dirks sisters house

Days Mission: Shot shots at home, waking up and coming home

I leave my house at 2pm get to Cape Town at 2.30, fetch Dirk, fetch Faith, head to the house. get there at 3pm. 

Get inside and Dirks brother Luke tells us that the parrot has flown away. Dirk spends about half an hour looking for it. 

Then disk and i put the coffee stickers onto the coffee mug. While his sister gets ready.

We start shooting after 3.30. Get some of the sleeping shots and then Dirk realises that the bird is in the tree over the road so tells Faith and i to carry on. So we get the last few shots of our actress in bed and then she leaves to look for the bird and Faith and i get some of the shots we need without our actress in bed. By now there isn't anyone in the house except for Faith and I we wait around for about 1 minuets. We are loosing light its about 4.30/5pm now, we are getting wrried we wont get everything done. Faith decides to call Dirk and his sister. 

They come back after Faith calls them and we start shooting the coffee scene. But we can all see his sister doesn't want to act and Dirk gets angry with her and so does Luke, they tell her to stop being unprofessional, that this is our last time to shoot and that I have came all the way from Somerset West to shoot today. Dirk then apologises and his sister starts to act again for us. We get great shots but shoot for longer than we expect. 

We leave around 7pm. I drop faith off and only get home around 8.30pm

5 May. Monday

Call Time: 8am

Location: Library 

Days Mission: Shots of our sad actress becoming happy

Faith had worked on getting us in to the library for two weeks. Sunday night i call dirk to find out if he had designed and printed the book cover we needed for the main scene(this is our main prop and Dirk wanted to use a specific book for the ending so i asked him if he would then design and print out the cover for the book he wanted to use, i asks him to do it on the 22 April he said he would.)

Sunday night Dirk tells me he hasn't designed or printed the book cover out and that there is no point in shooting the next day. That we should move it on the the next day.

I cant believe what I'm hearing because he said two weeks before this that he would get it done! And Faith has worked so hard to get a place at this library. Im angry because the work isn't done, Dirk had two weeks to design and print something simple, we are hitting deadline and i had to call him to find out the work hadn't been done, if i hadn't called we would have all shown up at 8 at the library and had nothing to shoot! 9am i watsapp faith to find out how the meeting with the director of the library went. She said we have permission to shoot the next day. So i informed dirk of the time and that we had permission.

So we move it on to the next day, Faith gets us in at 8.30 the next morning. 

6 May. Tuesday

Call Time: 8.30am

Location: Library 

Days Mission: Shots of our sad actress becoming happy

At 11pm on Monday night i watsapp both Faith and Dirk and let them know i have a really bad case of food poisoning(i was almost hospitalised). I tell Dirk he must use his girlfriends car or his brother must fetch his sister because his brother has a car or he must use a cab and we will all put in together for it.

At 9am on Tuesday i watsapp both Faith and Dirk to find out how the shoot was going but only hear back from Faith. She watsapps me in the afternoon and tells me that Dirk didn't want his sister to drive in a cab because it was going to be too expensive for the team to pay R200 between the three of us. 

Faith and i loose all hope for this project to be finished.

7 May. Wednesday 

Dirk says he doesn't know where to shoot now, so i think of alternative endings for our movie and think of places to shoot without having to change the ending. I tell him to look for a book shop or grocery store. 

He tells us he is going to go to a book store in his street. 

Wednesday night he watsapps us saying the book shop was closed and he doesn't know what to do. 

By now all my free days are finished, i have dead lines with work, i have wedding shoots to edit and engagement shoots to edit i have no more free days to shoot. I cant make it to Cape Town until i have class,i might even have to not go to class because of how hectic my deadlines are so there is no way i can be part of the shoot if he decides to shoot Thuresday! i Call Faith and explain and she tells me she also has work. 

I watsapp Dirk and let him know that we couldn't make it the next day, tat we were both so so busy and that every time we had scheduled a shoot we were there(except for when i was sick) So he would have to do this one by himself.

8 May Thursday

At 10am i watsapp Dirk and ask how the shoot is going. He says that its done and he is editing.

REFLECT

The biggest problem i had  was that Dirk never delivered on his part during preparation time, he was never ready, the two props that were most important to the movie that he insisted on making himself were never ready on time, that he insisted on taking all the big roles in the production of this movie, he was always late and in so doing made me late. Faith and i did every thing we were meant to do in advance and on time but when it came to Dirk he didn't deliver on time. However, with that said, Dirk my not be able to plan ahead and deliver on time but he is good at shooting and editing and accomplished the two large rolls he wanted to do. And on set we knew we could trust he will come out with a good product and he is a good story teller(however i told him a number of times to use a tripod to shoot certain scenes but he didn't want to and now our movie does have a lot of camera shake).

As a team we failed in not preparing well, we never assigned specific jobs to certain people and in so doing we were unprepared every time we came onto set.

Next time we have a group assignment i will know to assign everyone a specific job and make sure they follow thorough. 

Next time i will be more prepared and know so much more. If i can take anything away from this is that i now know my fellow team mates strengths and weaknesses and mine. And i know how to plan better and how to organise. I also know to insist on a second camera, and make sure we shoot with a steady cam and tripod so our shots are smooth.