The parts that have been changed completely are: the dog's perspective became exclusively the male protagonist's POV, who is shortly narrating bits of his life and integrating his current thoughts about himself and/or his loyal dog; we've only used the drawings as props and as an strong element of mise-en-scene, since they symbolize famous people, level which the character wants to achieve at some point in his petty life; we added an indoor scene as well.
With regards of directing, I wanted to create a state of being lost, unsuccessful and lonely, because of his bad fortune in life so far, but feeling a string of calmness and completion when he is looking at his dog, Sparky. However, since he doesn't have faith and confidence in himself that things can change when the right time comes, he sometimes forgets to behave correspondingly with his dog and becomes aggressive and abusive. This happens also because he is supposedly to have a bipolar disorder.
Jake's expressions and incredible acting helped us a lot, especially since we didn't have a real dog and we had to simulate one using the camera. I was sure that this role is going to suit him better than the previous one (for the original idea), since he needed to pay attention on his actions only in relation with his "pet" (in the pre-production).
On the second day of filming (which is illustrated above), I only directed and kept an eye on the equipment's bags. We only needed to recreate the scene inside of the Millennium Gallery, because we couldn't use some parts of the original footage (they were either overexposed or too shaky).
Instead, in the first day of shooting, I also was the sound mixer, capturing street noises and indoors ambiance sounds, which could help us creating the reality and liveliness we initially wanted to wrap the drama.
The post-production sessions took place on the same week, with me as the editor for both image and sound. I was helped a lot by Ibrahim and Jake as well, but I was the one who put everything together; adjusted the audio levels to be even, to fit the mood (when he is angry, the sounds would get a bit louder; a silent hollow wind in the background as the heartbreaking part threatens to appear, etc.) or for the dog noises and the character's narration to be fairly heard and understood; color corrected the whole footage; edited and included the title and the post-credits.
In addition, after Jake and Lee recorded the voice-overs, but they turned out to be heard only on the left channel, I got the most favorable pieces of audio through a short ProTools editing process and make them being heard on both sides, then imported them on the mother project.
Originally, we chose special roles for everyone in the team, list that can be seen below, but after we've opted for a whole new idea and technique, each of our contribution automatically changed.
Even though we were four in the beginning, after Lee confessed his dissatisfaction and concern about the whole task (mainly about the first idea), although he knew that me and Ibrahim were going to meet up and have everything planned meticulously this time, from my point of view, he still sounded like he was bothered by too much hard work that have been until then and that was going to come. Therefore, we had to re-shoot the drama from 0 with three people only. Still, we weren't so disturbed by this situation (just about the fact that he tried to find excuses when he knew we have to come across a new idea, but again it's my own opinion), because we worked great and we had a lot of fun during the filming as well.
Lee decided to come and help us with the editing, but most of the time, Ibrahim had to direct him on what to do, as he didn't seem to pay attention too much or to be too engaged in this project anymore. However, he still took part in the sound section by finding some of the dog noises and some other types of audio we used in the drama.
Having said all the above things, I do believe that we did all we could do in a short and rushed period of time, that we've been really organised with time, we've mostly worked as a team and we've overcome the tense moments during this massive process of making our first drama.
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