We filmed on the 20th of December, at our acquaintance's house. I arrived at around noon, and everyone filtered in over the next hour. We started filming at around 13:00, and ended at about 18:00.
We planned to have the shoot be a maximum of 1-2 hours long, but that was a huge underestimate - a lot of people lost attention and stopped working after every shot, and a lot of props were fidgeted with. You can't notice this since the camera doesn't focus on the center of the table much, but throughout the shoot, objects on the table were moved around indiscriminately. I think the planning here was much more important, as it kept the already chaotic nature of the shoot from getting more chaotic. One other problem we had with starting to film at noon and ending at night is that the lighting changes - you can see that there is sunlight on the backs of the characters in the opening shot, while there is none when the shootout happens. However, this is not very noticeable, and the sunlight can only be seen in a few shots. In the future, we might shoot over two days, or control the lighting more with things such as artificial lights or blackout curtains.
I was mostly responsible for the directing. I was responsible for determining the position of the camera as well as its movement. I did act for a short while towards the end, but I was mostly in the background. However, the cameraman, Vaughn, took over some of my duties and didn't show me the footage when I asked for it, which could have prevented some problems. Everyone else was an actor.
My role as a director involved getting people to be where they should be. However, a lot of the cast believed that I was too forceful with them in my directing. I didn't review the footage, as the cameraman refused to show it to me. I tried to ensure continuity by creating opportunity for cuts such as match-on-action and a variety of camera movement. Directing wasn't like what I thought, as I couldn't be as much of an auteur as I wanted to be - I needed to be much more considerate of my friends. I also realize that having the cast and crew stick together was much more important than I once thought.
Special thanks should be given to Aaron, who played the Chinese bodyguard, who helped us order food when we were getting hungry towards the end of the shoot, and our acquaintance William who lent us his house for the day.
We stuck to the storyboard and script most of the time. The storyboard and script were the glue that stuck everything together, but we did divert from the storyboard and script sometimes based on the situation (our filming location wasn't exactly our ideal filming location, and we also had to accommodate specific props and the lack of actors). For example, instead of sitting at the other side of the table, the Asian boss sat at the head. The opening shot, too, is knee-level, instead of being shoulder-level in the storyboard.
One problem we were facing towards the end of the shoot was that the camera's battery was running low. We had to recharge it to about 10% twice, which meant that we had long breaks in between certain shots that were directly related to each other. Sometimes, a cut in a shot would mean that the actors thought that they could relax for a few minutes - this led to a shot where an actor playing dead moved in between shots dramatically. In order to avoid this in the future, we could bring backup cameras or batteries.
Some shots were really good, but some were sub-par. I think the shot with the footage is bad - the screen is dark, obscuring important footage for the story. The lighting in the shot where the law enforcement looks at the paper the gangsters leave behind is also bad, as the words on the paper cannot be seen. Additionally, the firefight isn't very good, as there is not enough movement to emphasize the action. During the firefight, too, one of the actors didn't account for recoil and simply just held down the trigger while he moved the gun horizontally. This, I believe, was very unrealistic acting. The same actor had a terrible death that we had to cut out - after being "shot" (which was itself very unrealistic, as he simply just nonchalantly put his hand to his heart), he hobbled a good few steps until finally falling down. I think the shots with the guns were good - they don't have much in the way of sound problems, and the lighting on them looks superb, especially the one with the pistol.
Another good shot is the beginning of the firefight - there's good acting with the toss, and the pan was done well. The shot is below:
There were some sudden last-minute changes to the film - some lines in the script were not said as we thought they would be unnecessary, and since two of our actors didn't show up, I had to act, and we had to get someone else in as an emergency actor.
Here is a comparison of our initial cast and crew compared to our final cast and crew after we had difficulties with cast and crew members.
Me as the Director -> Me as the Director and FBI Agent #1
Jerry as a guard -> Jerry as the Asian Boss
Aaron as FBI Agent #1 -> Aaron as the Asian Boss's second-in-command
Bill as the Asian Boss -> Bill didn't show up
William as the replacement Asian Boss for Bill -> William had to leave for a checkup
Max, Tom, and James as the Russians -> No Change
Andrei as FBI Agent #2 -> No Change
Vaughn as the Cameraman -> No Change
Overall, I think the filming was not much of a success. We did everything we went there to do, but the process of filming was a huge slog due to an uncooperative cast leading to disagreements and arguments. We also had to make certain last-minute changes due to some members of the cast not showing up, which was annoying. Most of the cast and crew were extremely bored, leading to us consuming most of the candy on the table that our hosts had left and moving around a lot of the symbolic props. In the end, however, this failure was an important learning experience, and I feel like we've learned from our mistakes made in this filming session and will be much more efficient in future ones.
Finally, here is our rough cut:
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