Blog: Filming The Back-Up

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It was a big night on Tuesday, as we met up at SKOOL to film my episode of our "The Christmas Party" web series, "The Back-Up". After months of talking, writing, arranging and LINE LEARNING it was finally time to DO it, and I was AFEARED.

I didn't think i WOULD be all that worried, as I've done lots of filming stuff before but never this PROPER with an Actual Crew and Actual Lines and Actual CAST in it. One thing I was extra worried about was actually getting IN to the location - we were filming in the office of our course leader (he works in a basement!) and there had been some negotiation with SECURITY to let us in, but as it happened everything went FINE. Once in we had our first LOOK at the room - it was nothing at all like I'd thought it would be, so some on the spot RE-IMAGINING was required. It was around this point that Don pretty much BECAME the director. In theory I was meant to be doing it myself, but Don (who was theoretically just there with his pal Dave to do the filming and lights) totally knew what he was on about, came up with all sorts of suggestions, and when we DID the filming was the one suggesting re-takes when necessary. It was actually very similar to going into a studio with a GOOD engineer who cares about what's happening - it's much more sensible to listen to The Person Who Has A Clue, so that's what I did, which allowed me to concentrate on forgetting my lines and doing The Acting.

The rest of the cast - Madicken, Harry and Jenny - were all GRATE and the whole experience FLEW by in an oddly JOLLY haze, as you can see from this in-depth VIDEO DIARY what I did of the proceedings:



We got everything done by about nine o'clock and fifteen minutes later we were stood outside DONE. It felt weird having FINISHED after so long preparing stuff, but then it's not REALLY finished at all. There's still editing to do and then we FLY into the HUGE MEDIA FRENZY of our Social Media Campaign, but this felt like a Big Milestone. Mine was the LAST to be filmed, so that means we've actually DONE it - seven episodes planned, plotted, written, re-written, cast and FILMED, which is pretty bloody amazing i reckon!

The series gets released on December 1st, and I will doubtless be banging on about it AT LENGTH here, but if you'd like to be sure to get the updates you can follow the series on twitter, LIKE it on Facebook or SUBSCRIBE to our channel on YouTube. SO MODERN!

posted 14/11/2013 by MJ Hibbett

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