P R O D U C T I O N D I A R Y
DAY ONE
08/03/23: That first day was so exciting and a little nerve-wracking. It was just me, Fin, Miah and Brandon, with Amelia taking photos. We probably got more done than on any other day although I had wanted to break us in with some more straightforward stuff. That being said, I know we were all exhausted afterwards!
DAY TWO
11/03/23: Our next day was not as plain-sailing. It turned out we weren’t able to use the location that we’d planned on using and had to make a last-minute switch. We eventually stumbled across a completely empty room that we had to dress from scratch in no time at all. That day it was just me, Fin and Will behind the camera but, along with Brandon and Georgie, we were able to push forward and got most of what we needed with Georgie.
DAY THREE
13/03/23: Day Three was probably the most stressful. I’d been in London over the weekend and all the trains were cancelled! I was eventually able to make my way out of there and back to Exeter but only about 5 minutes before we were supposed to start shooting. It's not much of a surprise that we didn’t get everything we wanted but you can’t win all the time! And that’s when the real headaches began because now we had to start adjusting the shooting schedule.
DAY FOUR
15/03/23: Because of that previous day though, I wanted to try and get the most out of our next day which ended up being our longest. I think this was the one where we finally got into a bit of a groove with how we were working together. Plus, some of the stuff we missed on the previous day, we were able to get done then. It was an also strangely plain-sailing day even though we were covering the most emotionally intense stuff in the film. It’s weird how these things work out.
DAY FIVE
19/03/23: We’d had a nice four day break by this point but this next day was no less challenging. We shot in several different locations and there were a lot of moving parts to the production. It also involved the largest number of people on any given day and the rain decided to try and spoil the fun towards the end. And yet, somehow, we got all the things we needed.
DAY SIX
20/03/23: A lot of what we captured on days five and six sadly didn’t end up making it into the final cut but I definitely remember going back and forth again and again over one of those scenes in particular. Looking back, it was definitely for the best. They’re locked up in a vault now, never to be seen again…
DAY SEVEN
22/03/23: We called Day Seven “Project Toilet” or “Mission: Impossible”. That’s because of the lack of control we knew we were going to have over the locations we were using that day. One was the bus, one was a toilet (another deleted scene) and another was a busy university building. And yet, somehow, the stars aligned and we got through it, bit by bit. Project Toilet was probably my favourite day just from the pure adrenaline rush alone! I’m not even joking.
DAY EIGHT
23/03/23: I mentioned that on one of the previous days the rain threatened to put a stop to what we were doing. Well, on Day Eight, the rain came back with a vengeance. But this was the day where we’d planned to get all of Kiran’s coverage and credit has to go to him and Brandon who continued to push through it, take after take. What’s weird is, in those scenes, you can barely even see the rain so when we tell people that, they think we’re taking the piss. We’re not. We were absolutely drenched.
DAY NINE
25/03/23: The final day was all the stuff between Brandon and Niamh. It was bittersweet because we knew our time working closely together was almost over. But everyone turned up and just did their thing and before we knew it we’d somehow wrapped on Gridlock. We already knew we’d have to get some pickups a few months later, which we did, but to know that we’d at least got what we initially wanted in the can was just the best feeling.