Weight of the World is a film about an ex proffesional competitive eater (called Doug who is played by Aiden) who now owns a fat camp helping children lose weight. The problem Doug runs into is that the one thing he has sworn to destroy and overcome has suddenly bought land and is planning on destroying his camp and building a new fast food restaurant there, this fast food chain wanting to destroy all his work is Mc'Donald's. He gets help from a sleazy overconfident Lawyer by the name of Mike Schwipps (played by me) who explains the situation to him and aids him in giving him options to wich Doug finds a leaflet to win exactly the amount of money to pay Mc'Donald's off from building on his land. The competition he has to partake in though is going back to his roots of proffesional competitive eating.
For this film I was given the role of Mike the lawyer who I had auditioned for but alot had been changed, instead of having in everything that was in the script before which made him sound American they decided to change quite a few of his lines so that it would sound like something someone from Teesside would say. For the costume they wanted a colourful suit or a suit with sort of unique patterns, the only suit I had was the one from when we did the pretty woman street performance which I mentioned had a zip instead of buttons which they liked as it gives a new sort of feel to the character. The directors pictured Mike as sort of Saul Goodman so thats who I took my inspiration from and made him this sort of over the top Lawyer who thinks hes the best at everything he is challenged with.
Tuesday 9th May 2023
Today was the first day of filming 'Weight of the World' and the first day of filming from all the other films I had been casted in. The scene I was in was the very first scene with Mike and Doug, who was played by Aiden, where Mike storms his way into Doug's office, sits down on Doug's chair and hands him a notice that his camp is going to get destroyed. We had got told to be ready for 12:00pm and they will come collect us in the end they changed that to 1:00pm so that the directors and us could get something to eat first before we started the filming process. The room they had chosen was the green screen room where there was a little area in the corner of the room that looked like an office so they wanted to use that to their full potential. They started off with getting a few shots of Aiden from behind directing a line to a character named James, played by Jack, but he wasn't there since Doug mistakes the person knocking on the door to be James but instead it's Mike. My first shot was a close up of me dropping the file on his desk and then Aiden grabbing it, the camera was held over the desk by Kenz who would count me down when to throw the notice so that it was shown to the camera then Aiden would wait a few seconds before grabbing it shaking his hand not to excessively.
For Mikes second shot we started off with me closing the door off frame so they could have the sound of the door closing insinuating that I had just walked into Doug's office. I would then walk into frame on the right side of Aiden and say my first line just as im about to walk past which was "seems unfair to be playing agaisnt a joker" which links to what Aiden had said to James about telling him to go play cards with Ralphie and the other campers. After the line I would throw down the destruction notice again but it didn't matter how it was thrown down since it was off frame and they already had the close up looking down at the notice coming into frame. I then got asked after a couple times of doing this scene that when I end it if I could walk infront of the camera towards the otherside of the desk where Doug's chair was so that it could make a transition for the next shot.
The next shot was of me pulling the chair back so that I could sit down on Doug's side of the desk and act full of myself, so I put my feet on his desk and decided to grab one of his medals from his proffesional speed eating career and play with it in my fingers not paying attention to what Doug was doing. I would be explaining the situation saying how I have two options for him which were one 'he can let everything he has built go to waste' or he 'could pay the sum to keep that boat afloat and it should be smooth sailing from there'. This would then cut into the next shot which was multiple takes of me saying the line 'so what's it gonna be skipper' as I take my feet off the desk and throw Doug the medal showing off more of that confidence that Mike has in himself.
They would then keep cutting shots of a conversation between Doug and Mike, as Doug sits down and passes Mike back the notice so that we can talk about how much Doug has to pay if he wants to save his fat camp. When the camera was on me and Kenz was sat where Aiden was with the camera I found it hard to keep my eyesight level next to the camera where Aiden would normally be sat, I kept fluttering my eyes around and sometimes looking over at Aiden who would be across the room so it wouldn't look like I was looking where Doug would actually be sat. Eventually, we got a good take of me addressing the sum then looking down and flicking through the notice to 100% confirm that the sum was correct, that would be when Doug would storm out and leave the chair spinning and I had to act confused and annoyed at him for just leaving.
Thursday 11th May
On Thursday 11th May the directors had asked us beforehand if we could potentially film the entire scene again since they weren't happy with the way the green screen room office area looked and they had actually booked a room in the college that looked like an office we could use. Not much had changed apart from them adding a shot of me and Doug doing an intro walk down the hallway and me leaning on the door before entering myself and just handing Doug the notice while saying the 'joker' line. We also had some shots from behind me with my feet in sot which I found hard to always pinpoint the exact position I had to keep them in everytime we had to reshot a certain part. We also cheated the system abit by putting me on the side of the table instead of the end where I had been sat the whole time due to the side having a blank white wall behind me and a college notice board. At first I got confused and looked to my left where Aiden was sat acting like I was at the other side of the table again when I was supposed to be looking forward. You can't really make out that we had changed my position since Kenz did a great job of keeping sure the notice board weren't in any of the earlier shots.
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