Filming at Markham

Since we got our main character's work costume the last time that we filmed, Jania and I were finally able to film the work flashback and the break flashback this weekend!

Our main character works at a park, picking up litter and just keeping the park clean in general, so for our set, we chose to film at Markham Park. Since it's such a huge park, we knew we'd have minimal interruptions while filming; besides that, it's a beautiful, fitting setting for the scenes we wanted to film, so we knew it would be perfect. We drove around the giant park for a while, looking for a good area to film, when finally we found a cute little nature trail that we thought would be perfect. Once we were there, we completely trashed the trail. We threw garbage all over the place for our main character to pick up while on duty (don't worry, we made sure all the trash was picked up when we were done filming).  Then, we filmed our main character picking up the garbage as part of his job. A few people did pass through while we were filming, but the interruptions were minimal, and we posted a sign in front of our "set," asking people to NOT pick up the garbage. We got some funny looks, but people could clearly tell what we were doing since our actor was obviously dressed as a garbage man, and no one stopped us or kicked us out.

The nature trail we were filming at also had these cute little benches for walkers to sit and rest. Since they were located in the same area as the work scene, we decided it would make sense to use them to film our main character on his break. The purpose of this scene is to show our main character trying to draw in his sketch book, but being unable to get anything on the paper. With a pencil and sketch book in hand, we had our actor sit on the bench and act upset with himself for his inability to draw in that moment. Despite my initial apprehension about our actor, I think he actually did a really great job of conveying our main character's intended emotions during this scene.

Overall, I think filming actually went really well. We got a significant amount done in only about two hours, and I was super happy with the quality of most of the shots that we were able to get. Now I'm just hoping that filming the rest of the scenes goes as smoothly as these did.