The first shooting schedule we received was as follows;
Filming Week 1: November 17th-18th
For this first week of filming I fund out I had to isolate. Due to this, Sam moved most of the scenes to the second week so that I could be involved a bit more. Even though I wasn't there to witness filming I was sat at home living the memory through photographs that everyone from college sent me. I was told that the first day of filming went well. I was confident that everyone did well on the first day of filming as the scenes were well rehearsed and quite short. Thankfully Abbie was on set and took some beautiful photos of the process which I was absolutely over the moon about. Act 2 Scene 1 was one of my favourite scenes to watch and rehearse in the panto as it contains a lot of the cast and feels like a very traditional panto scene. When I saw the final edit of the panto I was glad the scene had gone well despite the disastrous rehearsal the day before (which I discussed in my last post). As for the 18th of November, filming too went well which I expected as Act 2 Scene 4 had been rehearsed well and everyone had got to grips with filming and each other on set the day before. For Act 2 Scene 2 I was a little more hesitant as to how it would pan out because we had rehearsed that scene plenty but Josh does tend to get stressed and frustrated when in front of a camera as he has admitted himself that he is not a screen actor. I was however informed that the scene went well and there were hardly any issues. That being said, week 1 of filming was complete! Now all that was left was for my return.
Filming Week 2: November 23rd-27th
This week was kicked off with one of my fairy scenes! It felt absolutely brilliant being back and in the middle of all the action. I will talk about the way I performed and fully go into my character in a separate blog post. On the 23rd it was beyond freezing cold which instantly made everyone a bit fed up. When we got outside to film we chose a location for Sherwood to film this scene. I do think the location of the shoot could have been a lot better as there was a lot of noise pollution as well as an unsuitable background given the circumstances. When it came to filming I feel like I gave it all I had. Working out the blocking of the scene was quite difficult as we did not have much space to work with, however I think we made it work well. On set behaviour was quite concerning I think. Given that the weather was awful and people were freezing people were quite snappy and had short tempers. What should have been a 45 minute shoot turned into a 2 hour one. Despite this, everyone knew their lines and I think the acting was pretty good when looking back on the scene. We were also meant to shoot act 2 scene 3 on the 23rd but due to a green screen being unavailable at the time, the shoot was moved to a later date.
November 24th was the biggest shoot day yet. On the 24th the shoot went really well! We shot with the first years (who are a pleasure to work with) and everyone was on top form (bar the odd line drop). I was particularly pleased with the location we chose for this shoot as there was plenty of space for us to film and the backdrop was one big bush and a few trees. If I'm being honest, I wish we had filmed all of the forest scenes at that location because despite a bit of noise pollution, it was pretty perfect given the circumstances and not being able to travel outside of College grounds. In the afternoon Sam and I headed up to the green room to film some of my scenes whilst the others finished up outside. As I have mentioned before, I will talk about my performance and filming in a separate blog post. This was my last day of filming as I only had a few scenes. This was a relief because it was absolutely freezing and I don't think I could have endured another day in the freezing cold wearing a tutu!
On the 26th there was a complete change in the shooting schedule. originally we were going to film act 1 scene 2&7. We then found out the theatre was free on Thursdays and ceased the opportunity. As you can see on the shooting schedule we were meant to get two scenes filmed, both the first and last scenes. Everyone arrived at the theatre at 10:30am as planned. The day took a turn however when makeup took two hours (which is understandable with so many actors on set) We then later found out that the theatre was needed at 2 by musical theatre. This meant we were on a massive time crunch and had to absolutely smash the scenes. I was completely confident with act 1 scene 1 during rehearsals so, I thought we could easily get it filmed in about 20 minutes. Boy was I wrong. As it turns out, Declan didn't know any of his lines and completely buckled under pressure. When Sam got to the edit it turned out that to get one shot it took 56 takes because Declan didn't know his lines. We had barely just finished act 1 scene 1 by the time we'd left the theatre and believe me when I say … emotions were running high. Despite all of this, some people were phenomenal when performing in the theatre, such as Sophie A. The set also looked fabulous an I'm very pleased with how the edit of this scene turned out. After MANY tears and tantrums it was time to move on to a different scene as we couldn't waste 2 hours when we had anyone we wanted at our disposal. Izzy made the fabulous suggestion of filming act 1 scene 2 in the afternoon which we were originally going to film on Wednesday 2nd December.
So we did exactly that! The scene was only a short one and wasn't too complicated meaning we could just breeze through it. This was also a scene that we had rehearsed this scene quite a bit and it was one that everyone was familiar with. I send the four people in the scene off for a bit of a line read through and rehearsal whilst I prepped the set and cleaned the green room a little bit so that film and tv could set up the lighting and cameras that they needed. Overall, we got finished at about 4:30 and everything seemed to go quite well. It's fair to say that I slept well that night!
Filming Week 3: November 30th-December 2nd
The final week of filming!
After weeks of rehearsals, stress and laughs, the final week of 'Babes in the Wood' had arrived. We had three more scenes until we never had to look at a piece of camouflage again! The shooting schedule for this week was as follows;
This week was by far the most hectic week of all, and I was only there for a day! On Monday the 30th I was not there to watch how filming went because I was shooting Tom's Christmas film elsewhere. However, things were not looking good on Monday. I spoke to the other people in the class and filming went on until 6:30pm that day! Once again, Musical Theatre needed to use the Theatre whilst the group was filming panto meaning everyone had to wait until that filming was done to finish. I was quite worried about this tournament scene as we had never rehearsed it and relied on camera work to make it look interesting. The initial idea was to have a boxing-esque tournament for this scene and have close ups of firsts been thrown and weapons being drawn and what not. This plan changed when getting in the theatre strictly because the lack of time we had. When I popped my head in after filming Tom's film, tensions were very high due to the situation with musical theatre. This didn't stop people from trying their hardest though and everyone powered through (which makes me immensely proud looking back). I only knew how the scene would look when I saw the final edit and I was absolutely over the mon and to this day will always think its up there as one of the best scenes. I think the acting on Sadie and Sophie A's part in this part deserves a special mention as I found the whole thing quite hilarious. Just goes to show if you put your mind to it, anything can be amazing as long as you put in the graft! I'll show you a few pictures below!
Then we have December 1st. The best day of filming. The kitchen scene! This was the scene I was dreading and looking forward to the most. The kitchen scene was never rehearsed by us and we just relied on everyone to learn their lines. This was a risky move but we didn't know how it would pan out. Thankfully Kelly had performed this scene before and she was on hand to help us. I don't think we could've done the scene without her! In this scene the nurse is in the kitchen baking a cake with Dave and Block. (Sophie Laverick who played Tackle was ill so we just had one of the two from the duo) Block is a bit dosey so Dave and Nurse tease him whilst baking the cake. on set in general there were too many cooks in the kitchen (literally) so there was just James, Sam and Kelly on camera and me looking over the scene. We were originally just going to throw flour at Josh but then Kieran suggested we used a compressed airline to spray flour at him instead. Its quite hard to explain so I shall attach a video below.
In terms of the acting for this scene I thought everything could have been bigger. My main critique throughout the whole thing was telling people to be bigger. I feel like Declan and Kate's laughing could have been way more exaggerated as well as everyone's reactions in the scene. Declan was, yet again, struggling with his lines. I am pleased with this scene when watching it back though and I'm absolutely over the moon that everyone had fun whilst filming this scene. I must also say that this set was my favourite of all because I think it's so detailed and looks like a real country kitchen!
The last scene left to film on December 2nd was act 1 scene 7. Unfortunately I could not be there to help out on this day either as I was filming Tom's Christmas film. Once again, I hear by word of mouth that the scene with Josh and Sophie went swimmingly!
So that's it! The whole filming process of 'Babes in the Wood'! I can't put into words how proud I am of each and every person involved. I will forever be grateful to Kelly for giving us the opportunity to film, direct and produce this panto.
All that's left to say is thankyou for reading this blog post and lets have you 2021!
All that's left to say is thankyou for reading this blog post and lets have you 2021!
Attached below is the finished pantomime!
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