Gamblers

Roedolf and Adele already had a few people in mind for casting this before we started. Liv, to play the role of the femme fatale, and two possible male actors who would be comfortable with being nude on camera.

 

A few days before we were filming, our male actor had to pull out, and with partial nudity involved, we struggled to find another man. With the space and gear already rented, we had to think on our feet, and think fast we did. I rewrote the script to be for two females, and one where the femme fatale becomes the primary voice, flirting with her target. At the same time, Roedolf sent out a message on Facebook asking for volunteers to help us out. 

 

The day before filming we met up to do a table read and production planning. We had a script, a plan, and two maybes for our second actress. It wasn’t until much later that night that we confirmed Talia as our second actress and sent her the script. 

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Early the next morning we all met up outside the studio we were filming in, brought in our gear, and started to set up. One of the first things we did, was to observe the space we had and figure out how we wanted to change it up. Then we had a seat, went over the plan for the day. This is when Talia and Liv met for the first time, and my first chance to go over the script with Talia. Thankfully she was pretty happy and comfortable with everything, so there were no last-minute changes. 

 

Adele and Liv had her costume already sorted, so she and Georgia went down the hall to start her make up, while Adele, Talia and I figured out Talia’s costume. We knew we wanted a red dress to contrast with Liv’s black one, and Talia had brought a few options from her own wardrobe. The second dress we tried on was perfect, so she and Adele went to do her makeup. Leaving Roedolf, Clarissa and I to set up the room. 

 

Adele and I did spend a fair bit of time moving between the two rooms to offer our opinions when wanted and checking in that everything was going well. (I was also on photo duty, which I had forgotten about in the madness of setting up). Not saying it was a race, but if it was, Roedolf, Clarissa and I took home the victory. 

 

Once everyone was ready and happy, we set in to start our day of filming. We started by running through the whole script from the wide-angle. Something we realised very quickly, is that we should not cast our sound person as a character. Clarissa played the dealer, and with that, meant I had to handle the starting and stopping of audio recording, and y’all, I was so bad at it! I would start it, then move slightly to read the character thoughts, so the actresses had something to work with, but I would always forget to stop the recording. Thankfully Clarissa was on top of it and kept reminding me.

 

Filming the wide shots took us a vast majority of our day. We ran through each scene before filming, talked it through, made a few little changes here and there. 

 

Then it was lunchtime! Adele ran up the street to grab us some food while we wrapped up the wide shots. 

 

On this lunch break was when we met Helen. Helen is interested in becoming our producer, so we invited her to join us on set to see what it was like. We also all got to talking and learning about each other more while we ate. 

 

After our lunch break, the girls popped back into makeup for a quick touch up, while we reset the room to start on Liv’s close-ups. Georgia stayed close on hand during this, to make sure Liv’s makeup and hair stayed in continuity. As did Adele, continually resetting poor Liv’s cherries and drink - thankfully she liked both of those things because she had to eat a few cherries and down her drink multiple times. Talia also stayed seated opposite Liv despite the fact that she was off-screen, which I thought was good because the duo continued to play off of each other.

 

With our time to be out of the studio fast approaching, we reset for Talia’s closeups. I’ll admit I made a mistake here, we totally forgot to keep using the fog machine to give Talia’s shots that same smokey feel. Other than that, everything ran really smoothly. Liv continued to sit opposite Talia, flirting and saying her lines so Talia could play off them. 

 

Suddenly it was nearly four o clock, we raced to pack down and reset the room to how it was before we invaded - thankfully this was much easier and quicker than the set-up. 

 

We did meet up again to record Liv’s voiceovers, and then it was into the editing suite. Roedolf took a swing at editing and produced a remarkable final edit that then went to Clarissa so she could work her magic. 

 

And what we ended up with is what you see before you. An awesome short film. Super proud of this one, and thanks to everyone for making it happen!