Let me start by saying I did not enjoy the Edale shoot. I did not enjoy being on camera; I did not enjoy being cold and wet; I did not enjoy having high resolution close-ups of my terrible teenage skin; I did not enjoy lugging several kilos of kit across the countryside. I most definitely did not enjoy having to use the last £7.50 of my student loan to buy a train ticket to the middle of nowhere and then not even being able to afford a coke in the pub at the end of a very long day. I asked myself, am I even doing the right degree? Why am I not doing business management or chemistry? I would be sitting in a warm classroom right now, and possibly wearing a rather fetching combination of lab coat and goggles.
But then, amongst all the mud and sheep defecate, I remembered why. It's because filmmaking is like no other career on earth. You probably will end up spending day after day knee-deep in all manner of disgusting things, but at the end of it all, you've got the chance to make something pretty bloody amazing. While I joke about my degree not being a "proper degree" all the time, it is hard work and effort, just in a different way to your conventional academia. And chemists don't get to watch their favourite movies as homework.
Let's get past the mud and rain; the shoot didn't go brilliantly. Ruby and Grace weren't all that confident with the camera, and since I had agreed to be filmed, I could only provide so much assistance. The light was bad, and made everything look very flat, and it kept raining, causing water marks on the lens which ruined some of our shots. We collected quite a lot of footage but it was all very similar and this impacted on us in the edit. But it could have been worse; considering it was our first proper shoot with industry-quality cameras and basic training, it didn't go too badly - our camera didn't break, we collected some usable footage, and none of us died.
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