"Dr Stewart is a confident and dead-pan, yet completely incompetent vet. He believes he is a good vet, but ends up doing a lot more harm than good and most of his patients don't last very long. He has as strange affection for cows."
I feel that the most important trait for Dr Stewart was that he would come across as deadpan and so I asked my friend Aidan, who has acted on many of my projects. I felt that he would convey the right tone and be able to deliver a believable performance as Dr Stewart.
Sheila"50-something year old office worker and lover of animals, especially her dog Coco who has a special place in her heart after her husband died."
Some of these developments came through as I was writing the script and the rest came from how I wanted to convey the tone of the piece, and these elements helped add to it.
I wanted Sheila to essentially just be an ordinary woman, but crucially could convey the sense of shock and befuddlement in her reaction shots as a lot of comedy would be able to come through naturally. We asked Samantha to play the role of Sheila as I felt he had the right look, and when seeing some of her reactions, I was happy that she would deliver a believable performance.
Coco
For simplicity, I will be using my own dog Coco to play herself in the film. She is well-behaved and responds well to commands which will help when filming. I also feel that, since she is my dog, it will be easier for her to listen to me, as she knows and trusts me.
Locations
We needed three main locations for the film: Sheila's house, a park and of course, the vet surgery. We decided to shoot Sheila's house in Samantha's actual house as she had photos with her in and it made it more straightforward in terms of set decoration. We only needed a living room, or dining room where we could place photographs of Sheila and Coco, and somewhere that was well lit and her house worked well in this regard. We also decided to shoot the exterior park scenes in the park next to the vet location that we found. We needed somewhere that was nice and open and could look aesthetically pleasing for Sheila to walk her dog, so we were not too worried exactly where this was - the park we ended up shooting at worked as it was near the other locations and was logistically quite convenient.
I liked the green wall in particular, I feel that, whilst it was not plain as I would have liked, it added a nice contrast to the white. This would have worked quite nicely.There were a few issues with this location (aside from the contributor dropping out) - it was fairly small and very close to a road, therefore we were likely to have a lot of background noise, such as cars driving past which would have made editing the audio quite difficult.
The next location we had planned to shoot at would have worked very well - we went on a location recce to a potential location in Ebbsfleet which looked very plain, just as we wanted, the room we would be shooting in was also well lit and had some features that would have added to the mis en scene very nicely. The television would have been a nice addition to the waiting room as we could put some clips of animals on there to add to the illusion that we were in a real vet surgery. The only drawback we had initially was the cost of the room which would have been £12 per hour which was a little steep for our budget. We were coming very close to the shoot day when the contributor dropped out, as they were no longer comfortable with letting a dog into the office, so we had to look for other options.
We were running out of options, and tried to get permission to film at the Maidstone Studios, but we were unsuccessful. Luckily Katie was able to get in contact with her local village association which turned out to be a good call, as the building looked much more appropriate for the aesthetic we looking for. The meeting room we were filming in also had a lot of cork boards that we could attach our posters to. There was a large model attached to the wall which we could not remove but we will be able to work around this by framing the shots to keep it out of view. There was a small charge of £16 for the entire afternoon, but this was not too expensive for us to cover.
The room we were using was fairly large and had more that enough room for the consultation room and the surgery room. We checked that we were allowed to remove posters from the walls so we could add our own to add to the impression that we were in a vet's office and waiting room. We were also able to move the tables and chairs around the room as we wished to make room for the camera and lighting equipment, as well as to help decorate the set.The area around the location was also perfect for the idyllic scenes with Sheila and Coco as there were very few people about and the trees and foliage helped to give a natural and calm feel to the scene.
We carried out risk assessments to ensure that each set was as safe as possible. We found several minor trip hazards, as expected, as we had the tripods and lighting equipment about the room and we made sure the whole cast and crew aware of where these hazards were and to take extra care traversing around the set. We were lucky with the weather as both shoot days were nice and sunny but we made sure that if the weather did change, we would take extra care with the equipment so it would not get wet. The fire exits were also kept clear throughout shooting. Since we were working with fake blood, we took extra steps to ensure that the whole area around the blood was protected using bin bags and paper to protect the room surfaces in case of spillage.We had a lot of issues with finding the main location, but I am happy with the building we ended up with. The building itself looked visually interesting and the rooms we used were fit for purpose, and I feel we will be able to do well with creating an authentic-looking vet when it comes to shooting.
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