Having no budget and no real production means doing pretty much everything by yourself, all depends on you.

For the 10 shooting days I was lucky to have a crew of 5 to 10 people depending on the day, meanwhile pre-productiong was a different story:

 

Organizing locations, finding actors willing to work for free, make a shooting schedule so that everything would match; a back up schedule; make a storyboard for the entire film, adjust the script and rewrite it several times; finding the right props, think of costume, organize extras, rehearsals with actors, and at the same time prepare for my role.

 

Ivan (my character) is the stereotype of macho, so I wanted to be as physical in shape as possible, I was working out everyday, and many hours also went into text study (fun fact: I studied text under the sun so I would get a nice tanned).

 

There were moments on set my head felt like exploding, and that is where the managing everything, directing and acting challenge brought me close to my limit: We were shooting one of my scenes (Solo scene), we were passed over time, my aunt wanted to come back to her apartment (Yes I had asked her and the kids to leave for the day, so we could use her apartment as location), technical issues coming from all direction. Solutions needed to be found fast, auntie and kids where waiting outside, light was starting to drop, but I wasn't going to leave without a satisfying performance.

 

Focusing on the scene and simply be in character, was nearly impossible with all the thoughts rushing through my head, but as always in filmmaking: if you believe in it enough and push through...  well you may not always end up having the footage you hoped for, compromises are inevitable at times, but you might realize in the editing room, that it wasn't all for nothing!