Filming next weekend! Rehearsal filming on Monday.

I haven't updated for a little while, not because of a lack of things happening, but an abundance! We're filming next Sunday and right now we're meeting quite often to rehearse (we might even be over-rehearsing) and on Monday we're going to have a filmed rehearsal in which we'll practice not only walking and talking but also the different camera angles and shots. I've been mapping out the camera angles on a plan of the location for the past few days now on my lunchbreaks at work. It's something I've never bothered to do before but it really helps you visualise and plan a full shot list and I'm finding it invaluable. I guess how useful it actually is will become apparent next weekend. Sadly our filmed rehearsal won't be on location (a wonderful central London apartment that a friend is lending us), but in Mark's basement mocked up to represent the space as much as we possibly can.

Right now I'm looking forward to our filmed rehearsal, and especially to editing the footage together and seeing if it works as a whole. I've done similar "dry runs" on music video rehearsals, and it has always shown me where my planning was weakest, which scenes needed more thought and which didn't really work, and allowed me to fix that.

Editing is like assembling the jigsaw puzzle. After the hustle of filming, I always find editing to be a real pleasure, ensconced in the study behind a computer screen with a cup of tea and a notepad filled with scribbled timecodes. Maybe a bit more time spent editing will kill that cosiness off, but currently it's one of the things I look forward to the most.

We've been working really hard towards this first piece of filming, doing a lot of rehearsals. If we continue at this rate, filming a scene a month, it will take us 18 months. That's just stupidly long. I'm hoping that once we get this first scene done we'll start moving things a long a lot more quickly, and we'll be more confident. I don't want this shoot to go on forever or become a millstone or a chore for anyone, as everyone is working for free on this project.

Let's hope it doesn't drive anyone insane. As each day passes it dawns on me more and more how complicated this project is and how utterly inexperienced I am.