Our first audition was with Kelly, an American woman. Prior to the audition Sophie and I had come to terms with that she might not be the best fit as we were set on our protagonist being Scottish in order to maintain a sense of place in a small Scottish town. Kelly, however, brought a completely new perspective to the role, making Jill feel like a warm Southern American woman. We loved Kelly so much that we decided to rewrite a character to fit her into our story, turning Alison into a stereotypical boho valley girl. She quickly became my favourite character! This rewrite was a spur of the moment creative shift but I believe it served the story very well, making it more dynamic and having a broader array of characters. Allison's original character was quite similar to the two woman we see gossiping at the start, this shift gave more room to play with for costuming and comedic moments.

When Lisa had applied for the role I was overjoyed, I absolutely loved her work in Keri's film last semester and knew she was extremely talented. From her first read through we knew that Lisa was the right fit for Jill.

From there onwards we had several auditions with several other women auditioning for Jill, they all brought a unique image to the table which helped us identify who could work best for the likes of Lindsay and Jennifer. Eilidh and Abigail we thought worked best.

Casting Matt was relatively straight forward, James sent in a self tape. Similar to Lisa he was just what we were looking for straight off the bat. He seemed very bubbly and cheery, bringing the perfect naive blasé feeling to his character. He had the right physical look we were after.

A chemistry read through was also done with Kelly and Lisa, as Alisons new character was had a lot of movement and because we wanted to really nail this part of the film we thought a rehearsal would be important. Again, Kelly and Lisa preformed very well together. They got the comedic beats, tone and blocking of the scene efficiently. With costuming for Alison, we wanted her to wear long flowy clothing, we planned out that this would be a part of her performance and relayed this to her in the chemistry read through.

We were running out of time to find a suitable space so the Apex became our best option. We had several meetings to address and work on problems which we would face if shooting in the space. The biggest one was the coffee bar, I suggested we shoot in two separate spaces or we construct our own coffee bar. With heavy set dressing and making the coffee bar from scratch, I was certain that this would save the space and make it worth while.

We arrived to set very early to begin dressing, I ensured that all relevant departments were aware of our presence upon arrival. The cafe was quite busy when we arrived but people slowly filed out the room as we set dressed and started putting equipment up. I assured people they were welcome to stay as long as they were quiet during a take, but regardless people were happy to leave the space which definitely worked to our advantage. We were an hour late to start due to a range of issues, a LAV and the follow focus failed so they had to be swapped out. Lighting and dressing the space took much longer than anticipated, this was definitely worth the wait however because it looked great.

In order to make up for lost time I had to encourage things along on set quite quickly, I found being strict with how many takes we could get stressful even if I knew we needed to move on. I prioritised not cutting any shots as I wanted to have as much coverage as possible. I instead minimised the amount of takes and time between setups instead, this worked well and we made up for lost time.

Sound was my biggest concern on the day, it was quite tricky from 12 - 3 as that is when the space was most busy. The Apex is open plan and the sound would travel up into the space. From 3 onwards we had the space to ourselves so we managed to progress much quicker after then.

Running behind slightly impacted our actor arrival times too, I planned to rotate actors on the day based on scenes so not everyone would be needed for a full shoot day. I had to delay Kelly coming to set due to this. In order to prevent this next time I would allot more time for set-up, I estimated poorly the amount of time production design would need.

Knowing all the problems from day 1 made the next day much more smooth, things like production design could be left up in the space over night and security allowed us to store kit in their office, saving more time for the next day.

We had initial concerns with accessibility of the space due to Mrs Henderson being a wheelchair operator. Prior to shooting I assessed a route of access and spoke to security in order to gain specific access for her. Blocking her segment took a bit longer and we ran behind during this as we had to change some shots to accommodate for this.

I wasn't as happy with this scene as it all looked a bit more like the Apex with seeing the blinds, roof tiles and general backdrop. It breaks the feeling a bit more in this moment, this was a bit disheartening because of how strong the rest of the film was and then it fell short at the climax. More time to plan and dress potentially could have helped this.

Lisa needed to leave set sharp that day so we had to move some inserts to the following day instead and mimic the cafe table in Sophie's flat instead.

Day 3:

This was a half day, all that was shot was the beginning shots of Jill, the shot of her and Matt and the opening inserts.

There was a miscommunication between departments and Nikola was not told about the pick ups we had planned meaning she didn't have the props to recreate the setting. I quickly left set to grab props from my house and Nikola went into Primark to buy replacements.

We had finished all the shots before Nikola had returned with the props so there was a long wait between set-up's. The crew morale was quite low and everyone was very tired by this point. When Nikola returned with the props everyone was keen to wrap as quickly as possible. We were all pleased to wrap when we did.

The miscommunication is partly my fault also, I should have relayed the pick ups to the whole team so everyone could prepare.

Sound was a bit more tricky, we knew on set that ADR would be required so I promptly got in touch with actors who would be needed for this. Dialogue was a touch fuzzy at certain points due to background sound and with only having one working LAV. Niamh, however, did a great job with rescuing sound. We had a tutorial with Zoe and she gave very helpful creative notes which we took on board.

Layback was a difficult process, the aspect ratio was not working and the picture was warped. We were not sure where this issue was coming from and decided it must have been an import issue. we intend to go back into the edit after the crit to fix this problem as well as any other points of criticism mentioned