Transition - Filming Day two

We were really looking foward to shooting this project finally! Everyone was excited to get in the Diner and start making something fantastic. We started the shoot at around 10AM, the crea showed up to set up everything before me and Conor had to pick up the two main actors from Maidstone East. This shoot consisted of recreating the scene in the 'American Diner', it was amazing that the location was so easy to get and so close to us! The diner is used in pretty much every episode of Riverdale and it's very important, it is very atmospheric and has a dramatic feel to it everytime a scene takes place. We have never been in the diner before, and it was very interesting when we walked in! It fit my vision straight away. I wanted to make sure that the diner had a 'dramatic' aspect within the scenes, i needed the lights to be dimmed and gloomy making sure that not all characters are seen.

The diner wasn't as big as we had hoped for but we still worked with it. When me and Conor picked up the two main actors they instantly were being very fun and friendly, they knew was my vision was towards the project and worked with me very well. I know the team had a bit of an issue with lighting when we went to pick up the actors but Ferg stepped in to help them. I really wanted to make the diner have the prefect lighting, colourfull, dimmed but enough to see the main character. We struggled with getting this, we tried to perfect it every way posibble! We faced a problem were we could see shadows on the wall and had no idea how to get rid of this. There was a lot of red within the diner so i wanted to go ahead and work with it, i tried to get the camera op (laura) to film on the right hand side of the Diner where we found red fairy lights that really worked well with every shot. I had tried to place the actors in different positions but the shadows kept getting in the way with the lighting. We made sure it looked like it was midnight and the diner was closing.

It took us some time to set up the whole set but finally everyone was happy and i was very excited about the look of the colour within the various shots. Laura was DOP, i was directing and Katie & Conor shared the responsibility of being sound helpers. Conor was ovverlooking the shots and making sure that the script is being followed, i needed to make sure that the actors are happy and the shots that are being recorded are good to work with. I wanted to also make sure Katie was happy with them so she could work with the edit well. The scene was very realistic, i made sure the actors looked similar to their characters and really felt as if they are them, including their accent and personality.


I was really feeling this entire shoot, everything went well and the entire set looked brilliant. Conor and Laura wanted to add some extra shots such as establishing and tracking shots which i thought were great ideas, we tried them and they also looked interesting; it gave the entire project more of a dramatic feel with these tracking shots. A lot of mystery was gined throughout this process. After the shoot was completed i drove both of the actors back to the train station, i reviewed the footage and Katie got straight to work with editing - which she had already edited and uploaded as a rough cut.