Event 5

Reverse cinema project

For our thriller movie we were going to do most of our filming in Zoe's apartment at the Wellesley Student Apartments(WSA). We had no back-up plan. As we were walking to the lifts, past what I'm guessing is a sort of reception desk, carrying all the obvious equipment e.g cameras and tripods, we were stopped by a woman bringing bad news.

After asking us what we were doing, and us giving an honest(big mistake) answer, we were told by this woman that we weren't allowed to film in the apartments - and especially the bedrooms. WHAT!?!?! We had absolutely no idea about this rule. We were also told that you're supposed to give them 24 hours notice - that's half of our filming time gone, and quote; "your faculty should have told you". WHAT?!?

So we went upstairs and checked the apartment handbook, which apparently they're always using to tell you what you can't do, and guess what.. there's absolutely nothing in the handbook saying that filming is forbidden. So we went downstairs again, understandably slightly annoyed, and told this incredibly annoying woman our new discovery. But... "it doesn't matter if it's not in the handbook, you're not allowed" - (I'm not sure if that quote is exactly word for word, if not, it is at least very similar to what she said). We also told her that we had release forms signed by the other people in the flat, giving us their consent. But that still wasn't good enough for her, she wanted us to write a letter which the manager would have to sign.

We went to James, who had no idea that we were supposed to ask for permission. So he called her and I think had basically the same conversation as we had. The final outcome of that was that we had to write a letter. So we wasted some more time by writing the letter, emailed it to James who made it nice and pretty and professional. He also added his signature. In the letter we put, what we were going to do, what we weren't going to do, the times in which we were and weren't going to so this things etc.

Seeing as we had been told that we weren't allowed to film in the bedrooms, which is where we wanted to film, we decided to leave that part out of our letter. The point being, that if they signed it then we would be allowed to film in the bedrooms. They did sign it, so we took that as permission and filmed in the bedrooms.

So in the end it did get sorted, but it wasted so much time and it definitely wasn't a good start to the day. Our feelings towards the WSA managers etc are not too kind now. We've shown some of these feelings in our movie credits, look carefully for a comments between 'video editor' and 'production co-ordinator'.

Despite all that we did get it sorted. The whole thing was frustrating but it was a new experience and shows that things won't always go your way.