28/10/06 - DAY FIVE SHOOT - IT'S A WRAP!

Ladies and gentleman...today was the FINAL day of Gaylon Peglegg shooting...with re-shoots, green screen, pick ups, and new material!
A highly enjoyable day and I now have ALL the footage I need to complete this madness of a project! And what a really cool days work! For starters today let me big up the dudes involved. Lee was on fine form today (is he ever not?!) in his main role and nursing a cold he marched on and did his thing, getting in the spirit and giving us mere peasants something to marvel at with his genius performance! In public too...more in a moment on that! Secondly was the return of Emma Greaves! A true star. She attended to re-shoot the continuity issue ridden scene in which she begs Gaylon to perform an exorcism on her daughter. Now in a previous post I discussed the power of alcohol to put her in the loose frame of mind to open up the acting. (I, by the way, am a non-drinker. Not a drop!). Emma however surpassed herself today and required no such liquoring up! Well done to her and very impressive! The poor girl was made to look distraught again, and turned in another brilliant performance to cap off her involvement in Gaylon. She is a welcome Troika+ member!
Also, Amanda was on hand to help out on crew duties, with some great On Location shots as you see on this very page! Well done and a big round of applause Amanda!
Ruth, tireless crew member as always, was also on hand to back up the images you will see in this fine film....and was today the perfect hostess as always!
And also returning was Theo Garvey....to generally help out and jump in on some footage too!
Always a pleasure to have this guy around...very talented and enthusaistic....sporting a WICKED J-Style haircut....and showing us his latest movie The Purgers...which FUCKING ROCKS! (See http://theoeffects.blogspot.com. Do it NOW!)

Oh...and I did some things too..you know...cameras and directing and stuff...you know...little stuff! (!!!!) So we bagged some Green Screen footage for inserts today. Anyone out there who is comfortable with After Effects etc, let me explain what I did. I shot Lee just fooling around so that could lay him OVER the transitions between scenes....just pop him on with some motion blur from edge of screen, doing something funny...and zip him off again. Just thought this would be some added entertainment for the viewer...and pack in some more laughs...while showcasing technical ability too!

Then we re-shot the scene with Emma which was neeeded due to technical (ie WEATHER) issues before. See above for details.....she turned in a greta performance which will be really cool on screen. I thank Emma from my heart for her work on this project and she will return to the screen again folks!
Then, the highlight of todays shoot. I wanted to craft a title sequence for the show and we had ideas for cop style running, and jumping etc. Now I had no desire to storyboard it. I knew the kind of shots we wanted and most of it relied on Gaylon out in public. Crowd reactions etc.
So we took to Sheffield City Centre to show them the power of Gaylon! Lee in full garb running, jumping and skipping his way through Sheffield Centre! The poor devils! What a blast this was with some BRILLIANT spontaneous work and shots. Really sweet looking too!
A note to all fimmakers reading this...there is nothing wrong with just picking the damn camera up and going to shoot sometimes! Some filmmakers do this exclusively (not me I may add!) and I can hands down say we would not have got the footage and shots this cooly if we had planned and boarded the stuff. So I have 15 minutes of really cool footage to pick and choose and work in to 1min 20secs title sequence to the theme I wrote. Awesome!
And a big HELLO to St Johns Ambulance Crew. While hanging round some of Sheffield's public events on near The Crucible a charming Ambulance lady asked who we were, what we were filming and would we know how to get help for them to film some free promotional charity stuff. I put them in the direction of a good resource to help and in return they let us shoot Gaylon mesing round in the ambulance they had...and they even suggested he could steal their CPR Test Dummy...which he did and looked great. And one really cool guy even stepped up to some acting, throwing Gaylon out of the ambulance! Briilaint! Thanks guys! Will DEFINITELY use the shots for the title sequence!
We even did a Ghostbusters style run through the crowds shot in busy shopping area which looked cool. And jumping off walls, myself doing a cameo as gaylon forces me to kiss the ring (great fun!), and an underground car park fight and robe pull up shot with Theo (again, cool cameo for the titles!). I would have loved a cameo from Ruth, but I don't think she was ready for the glamour of it all yet! Next time.

And finally today some small, slow paced, dolly style shots for a montage segment that replaces the orginally grander Congregation scene. This was adpated last minute. IF READERS HAVE NOT GRAPSED THIS YET, SEEING AS THOUGHT THIS IS FINAL DAYS SHOOT REPORT I WILL SAY IT AGAIN....ADAPTABILITY IS THE KEY TO SUCCESS! Be prepared, in filmmaking and life in general, to adapt to whatever is needed, or suitable, at any time. We had planned some shots of Gaylon in bars, or busstops etc, but quickly adapted this to a Gaylon at home segment, with Lee on toilet, brushing teeth, and ironing ...and so on. And it will be FAR better as a whole than the unlinked shots I had originally planned. Will include some CG news headlines in shot, so i shot everything to side of frame to make way for them later. more on that as it happens.
So all in all, a great days work. Something different. More spontaneous (and so more funny!) and some awesome footage. Which I better crack on putting together! about 70% done on the whole film now, with this wrap on photography, so head down, coffee on, and lets get to it. The self imposed deadline looms......that's a wrap on filming though! But Gaylon WILL ride again!

Oh....and by the way...did I mention.....I FUCKING LIVE FOR DAYS LIKE THESE!
And got to see The Purgers too!