Production Diary Day 16
Saturday August 20th 2016
Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff
So, what can I say about this day's filming? No... Seriously, what can I say? You see, this was the day we filmed the end of Episode 5, a massive 7 page scene – with heart, raw emotion and fantastic dialogue all from Hannah Celyn Griffiths.
So without any spoilers... Well, it was a long day – for many reasons.
First of all, we have to say a massive thank you to Chapter Arts Centre for giving us a room to film at discount and for leaving us alone to film and just being all around amazing! Also a big shout out to our supporting actors on set that day- Tom, Richard and Louisa- who patiently worked with us.
We had on set our three supporting actors, Emma Jason playing Karen and four of our main cast – Hannah Celyn Griffiths, Ben Wilson, Rob D Mealins and Andrew Machin.
We rigged the set – a cafe interior. We probably had the most lights burning ever on a Whovians set, six in total and I'm not gonna lie it was one hot day. The crew were lucky and in shorts and our actors didn't complain once – from what I recall!
That's your lot. That is literally all I can tell you about this shoot – as it is full of spoilers and drama from episode 5! We started filming at 10:30am and wrapped at 6pm. We had an amazing cast and crew and knocked it out of the park. We also wrapped Emma Jason on Series 2, who was amazing on set always giving us a laugh with cheeky comments, but who is a fantastic actress and we loved having her involved.
So that was that – a hard day's work on something I can't tell you about, so watch this space!
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Production Diary Day 17 Monday 22nd August 2016 6:30pm - The Heathcock, Llandaff
Sometimes, filming Whovians, we can get a sense of deja-vu. We've been here before. And so it was on Monday when we returned to another location from Series 1- the Heathcock pub in Llandaff- for some scenes for Episode 3. The pub has undergone some redecoration and refurbishment so isn't automatically recognisable as the same venue from Geek In Silver. Again, we have to give a massive thank you to the landlords Paul and Geoff for allowing us to film there.
Rhys was in the director's chair for tonight- as he and Craig will be credited as co-directors for this episode- with Craig and Teddy on cameras (Teddy also doubling up on sound) and Craig's son Cian helping us out with the clapperboard. Again, a small cast with only Matthew Fisher and Ben Wilson required for these scenes.
We had two scenes to film so got cracking with the first, and longer, scene where Rob asks Andrew a favour. We had them sat by the window but were conscious about losing the light (an issue that we had whilst filming there last year). Luckily with some inspired lighting choices, we were able to get workaround shots for the start of the scene as well as some interesting Go-Pro shots. As always, performance-wise, Ben and Matthew absolutely killed it. It's wonderful to see the little bits of business Matthew adds in, such as going to grab his pint back or the pronunciation of a word. Huge thanks also go to our background artists Grainne and Joe for their help.
The second scene was a shorter one where Rob and Andrew discuss what fandom means to different people. This was shot in a different part of the pub so we needed to shift some of the furniture around. The scene was shot pretty quickly, although we had to go for another take at one point as Ben got his coat tangled up and couldn't get it on properly. At the end of this scene, Matthew added another lovely little bit of improvised business which had us all smiling.
Once we were sure we had everything we needed, we wrapped the shoot at around 8.30pm. This was Matthew's last day of filming on Series 2 of Whovians, and I think I can speak for the whole cast and crew when I say we've thoroughly enjoyed having him on set. This won't be the last you see of Rob however... but I can't say any more on that at the moment...