Vathana Suppiah: Small pockets of time27.05.2019

We asked Papaya Young Directors’ finalists to describe the biggest challenge they faced during this year’s contest.

The last scene was the hardest part of the shoot. We couldn’t fly a drone in a residential area, so we had to find another way to get a top shot of the tables. Also, the tables weren’t made until the final minute so we weren’t able to rehearse prior to shooting. To add to that, London weather was not very kind to us that day so we had everything from clouds to rain to bright sunshine.

Finally, we chose a location that had a safe balcony area where we could film. We then just placed the tables in line with the camera frame. As for the rain – nothing you can do about that. Just work as quickly as you can to allow for the small pockets of time possible.

If I could approach the challenge in a different way I probably wouldn’t write an outdoor scene! And we would probably get the custom tables made earlier.

We had a great colourist and online artist – so hopefully, the footage came out right. Our budget meant that we didn’t quite get the look of the custom tables we were after but I’m happy with what we captured. Thanks to this situation I learned to leave time in the schedule for things to go wrong. Because something will always go wrong.