Our media group (consisting of Kennie, Matt and I - Jamie too; although technically he isn't in the group) went out to film our media project today and I'm kinda pleased at how it went. Well, key word there is "kinda". We ran into some bumps along the way - as you'd expect - but overall everything went fine. I'm kinda disturbed that we probably spent more time messing around than doing actually "work"; if you could call it that. And yet, we still managed to do most of what we had to do. Just some final creases that need to be ironed out (it was beyond our control anyway for these final "creases").
Things started out on the wrong foot at the time we chose to meet (11AM, if you're wondering). Funnily enough, despite being the latest to wake up (10:45AM) I managed to get there before anyone else. Not long after my arrival, Kennie shows up. This is when things start to spiral out of control... Ok, maybe "spiral out of control" is a little melodramatic. But basically, no-one turns up. I look at my watch: "11:05" it reads. We ended up ringing Jamie who apparently, and I quote: 'Miss the bus but I'm 10 minutes away. Max.' So, Jamie's fine. That's good. Just for a minute there we thought he got himself into some sort of trouble, and that would've been bad since there weren't too many days where all four of us could be together to film.
Then there was the matter of Matt. We call him. No answer. That's bad, by the way. Very bad... I thought to myself. Nothing happens for the next five minutes or so. Kennie and I spend this quality time talking about important project stuff; example conversation topics include:
- Where we gonna have lunch?
- When we gonna have lunch?
- Can we have lunch now?
- What'd you have for breakfast?
- I'm tired. Let's go home.
- The script for future of our projects - which strangely (or not so strangely for people who know us) kind of went like Patrick Stewart's "script" for his next project:
etc.
After what felt like an eternity, Matt appears in his black Toyota. I run to the side of his window to give him a heartfelt slap across his cheek, I was stopped in my tracks. Well, not really stopped since I couldn't be asked to start walking anyway. I just bided my time and waited for Matt to get out of his car and walk closer... and closer... ever closer... then I forgot what I was doing and resumed my conversation with Kennie. More time passes and it's now about 11:15 according to my watch. Eventually, we get tired of waiting and we part ways to look for Jamie and meet up outside college again at 11:30. When I say "look" I meant that Matt and I (in his car) went to McDonalds to get some food. I just got some large fries to tide me by until lunch (I thought of it as quick brunch) and Matt ordered some coffee. Small problem with that though.
THEY WERE OUT OF COFFEE.
Let me remind you that it was in the morning too, namely the main time people want coffee. Ok, fine. Matt then orders some tea.
NOPE. OUT OF THAT TOO.
Wait, what? Are we at the right place? Matt grits his teeth and asks: 'Ok, so what do you have?'
Er... WE DON'T HAVE ANY HOT DRINKS.
W-T-F. Why the hell didn't you tell us in the first place?! And, more importantly, it's the middle of winter and you don't have any hot drinks?! Heresy! Blasphemy! It ended up with me just having large fries (£1.39), at least it was fast. And I mean: fast. I know there was hardly anyone there but seriously. You order at Window 1. Pay. Move to Window 3 (what happened to Window 2, you ask? I have no idea. They don't use it that much.). And boom! It magically appears in your hand as they hand it to you. We literally pulled up to the window and the woman gave us the fries.
We get back at exactly 11:30, according to Matt's in-car clock, and we see Kennie's car there already (a dark blue VW Polo, if you were wondering) with Jamie sat in the passenger seat. After a few words here and there we drive into Franklin College car-park; which despite being the half-term is still open and half-full. It seems staff and other workers seem to be at college doing... er... work, I guess.
We film for a bit, doing what we have to do. Freezing our butts off in the cold morning air. So, normal things I'd say. Things don't really pick up until round about 12 where we decide it would be a good idea to have lunch. I agreed that it was a good idea. There's never a bad time for food (unless in an unfortunate and horribly clichéd turn of events, the food ends up to be you). Matt wanted to go to anywhere but KFC -how can you not like chicken?!- while the rest of us insisted on eating some sweet sweet chicken. We do what was deemed most convenient at the time: part ways.
Somehow Kennie ended up taking some extremely long route to KFC, so we get there late. No matter. As food was swift and enjoyable. We shared a boneless box between the three of us. We spend the next 40 odd minutes eating, drinking and talking. Matt was, I hate to say it, forgotten about until I looked out the window and say a black Toyota drive off away from KFC. I turn back to the other two and ask: 'Hey... that car. There *points to car* doesn't that look exactly like Matt's car.' Kennie replies half-heartedly: 'It does and all. And the driver! Ha! It's a splitting image of Matty!' Jamie then interrupts: 'Guys... that was Matty.'
Damn.
Well that's not good. Kennie pulls out his phone to call him, only to find that Matt had actually been calling him. Opps. He attempts to call him now, no answer. Probably because he's driving. Now, this just keeps getting worse and worse, dunnit? What do we do to rectify this situation? I'll tell you what we did: Nothing. We figured he'd figure out sometime that we were here and so we carried on eating. We spend some more time and finish off most things (which is not bad for three people) but there was still some Pepsi left. Oh well. Drink for Matt, I guess. Meanwhile, Matt reaches Franklin College again and finally decided to call Kennie back. Turns out he used the drive-thru at Burger King and ended up parking and eating next to Kennie's car. Yes, he parked next to Kennie's car and didn't notice.
We finally returned to work and did some filming. The details I won't bore you with. There were plenty of moments, like when I save Matt's door from certain destruction when he decided to go before I closed the door. The door was inches away from being smashed to pieces before I pulled it back. Now, that's skill. There was also when Kennie was driving along with his passenger window open, I figured: 'Hell. Might as well.' And leaped in, all movie-style. On more then on occasion, we thought that the inclusion of walkie-talkies or some sort of cheap and fast communication device (the lag time between calling the mobile and when it actually rings is quite large) so we could do cues better. But nevermind, we worked it out eventually.
At roughly 2AM we found that the camera was running out of battery, so we did another few takes and ended up at "The Trawl" a pub near where we were filming. Seeing as we were going to be there for a while, we started to play pool. That's when problems arose. First, and get this, we had to show some sort of ID to play pool. I mean, WTF?! The woman's excuse was that she "wasn't running a Youth Club." I looked over to the other pool table and a bunch of little kids were messing around with the cues and everything, while their parents sat behind them drinking and generally ignoring them...
Ok then... we handed some ID in. So, all was fine. We played some pool. Turns out Matt is good, real good. Jamie and I ended up teaming up with him, and only won the first game because he accidentally potted the black ball. We carried on potting afterwards and he managed to pot all the yellow while we had about 5 reds on the table. Well, at least I managed to pot most (or was it all? I forget) of the reds. We play another round of pool, Kennie comes along and joins in. We were playing doubles now, he said that he 'couldn't play' but still managed to get them down to the black ball by potting 3 yellow balls in a row. Couldn't play, my ass.
This carried on until the fifth game when we were about to finish. The woman (same woman from before) asks this to be our last game. Sure, seeing as it was our last game. But she seemed pretty rude about it, nevermind though we had more important things to think about. When we did eventually finish, as we were walking out the woman (who does indeed work there) has the nerve to shout: 'Don't come back!'
WTF. If I'm not mistaken that's bad customer practice. We carried on leaving anyway and did some more takes. Eventually we did all we could and so went home. I got home at about 4PM and just slumped down on the sofa, exhausted. We still haven't completely finished our filming either, so we decided to leave it until the next media lesson. It's only a small part anyway.
And so ends the story of what happened yesterday (I started this post yesterday and only finished it today. That's an indication at how much I wrote and how much happened).
When the ad is done, I'll be sure to post it up on YT for your viewing pleasure.
(And yea, I know there's few pictures in this post but I'm not sure what pictures I can actually put up. So deal.)
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