Blocked

'Blocked' might seem like a silly little film to most people (because it is), but to me it represents so much more. As odd as it may seem, this film was the hardest project I've ever worked on. What was initially meant to be a quick simple project ended up taking months of my life, many £££'s and a lot more blood, sweat, and oh yes, definitely tears than I expected.

This was my first ever foray into shooting on film, let alone super8, and I severely underestimated the challenge. We shot this as part of the straight 8 film competition, which involves shooting the film without any editing, using just the camera's trigger. The film is then sent in and the sound design is added later on.

I don't want to bore you with paragraphs (I could fill a book) of all the challenges we faced, but some included going through 3 DoPs and 3 production designers; an incredibly stressful and admittedly badly organised shoot day; discovering at the end of said stressful shoot the camera had jammed and we hadn't shot anything all day; having to organise a new shoot all over again; camera shooting at the wrong speed and so being out of sync with the audio; and many more small things.

Writing it all down it feels somewhat trivial, but there were some pretty tough times and I was very close to giving up on a few occasions. Which is why even just completing this project is very special to me. It has ignited my love for comedy and taught me more than any other project ever has, so whatever happens to the film, I can always look back at it as a reminder of the bad (terrible) and the good (hopefully great?) times!