So, as you might/should know, the first video shooting for Project F went down on December 1st (+ some test videos on November 30).

Well, there were quite a lot of obstacles to handle….

I was very excited and anxious at the same time about it in the days before, and I slept 2-4 hours each night prior to the shooting…..

Planning such a shooting and doing it…. was all completely new to me.

And as a bonus, I’m pretty much a nerd/couch potato, so this was all quite far away from my usual comfort zone.

The location was really good, …..BUT….had quite some problems to offer as well.

The lighting was way too dark outside the pool, which is a problem especially now in December.

The ceiling was pretty high and the most important lamp out of 5 wasn’t working. The other ones were pretty weak.

In the pool, there were two big lights on one side so we tried not to shoot in the direction of these lights.

The counter-current system wasn’t working, I wanted to use that as well.

The pool was pretty big for a private indoor pool (4×8 meters) but rather shallow (1.45 meters).

And the biggest problem was the fact that the pool had no tiles like a usual one but a special sort of thick foil on the concrete.

That was very nice to walk on….but as I soon realized….after swimming around with my fins…. fins would easily damage that foil with dents and small rips.

That simply meant that we couldn’t use fins and also that we had to be extra careful not to further damage that foil.

Also, there wasn’t much time to shoot, at least not as I would have liked to have.

The location was only available during the week, so not every participant had a lot of time.

3 of the 4 frogwomen arrived by train (2 at the same time) and I had to pick them up which took time as I had to drive over to the train station 3 times and back.

But more importantly, the weather was very bad which affected the trains directly in this case.

One frogwoman was scheduled for 5 hours of shooting but due to massive delays, incl. a tree on the tracks ….which damaged the train(!)…. she was only there for 2 hours.

And that wasn’t the only delay of the day with the German rail….

I planned some scenarios for the day, but with the shortened time we had to improvise quite a lot.

Also, directing and filming were completely new territories for me.

We certainly didn’t film as many videos as I hoped we would be, but well…..it was my first shooting ever….so it was basically a test run.

But with all these circumstances included….I’m still very happy with how it went!

It was a great experience for sure and we did manage to film some good scenes.

The 4 frogwomen really did a good job, I am very happy about that!

2 of them had no scuba experience at all and one only very little from a scuba experience lesson.

The other one has scuba and freediving experience and that really shows in the one big action scene we filmed as she was mastering it like a stunt double.

I was very happy that these two were willing to make that scene, not everyone would have done that!

And I am very glad that all 4 frogwomen and the camera guy/divemaster were happy with the shooting and they all would return for another one.

Next week I will work with a new editing program to cut and post-processing the video footage.

I want to upload the first video next Sunday if everything goes as planned, and then one more each week….or perhaps two.

They will be available for sale here on the site. Will need to see if I will have some sort of download shop system for that later on, but not for the start.

I hope that the videos will get bought in a way to re-finance at least parts of the costs ….as acquiring all that gear was verrrrry expensive for me.

I spend a lot on especially these wetsuits, the scuba tanks, all the masks, regulators, fins etc.

And this location was quite expensive as well….

All that killed quite the biggest part of my savings.

I learned quite a lot and have written down quite some notes on how to improve the whole process on the next shooting.

Next time I wanna shoot much more according to script with less improvising.

Also, I will work on my camera skills in the meantime to get the best setup for the next shooting.

In the meantime, just a little teaser….. :

(the picture is a massively cropped screenshot of the unedited video footage)

Yeah, that is actually the intake hose…in my videos, no outtake hoses will get cut 😉

#no cheating

In the VIP-area you can see the whole (uncropped/still unedited) picture/screenshot 😉

–