After the storyboarding had completed they went to Ben and Georgina who used their knowledge of when the actors were and wern't available to decide which shots be filmed in which order, this was made more complicated by the situation regarding only having each half of the room for half of the shoot.
The first day of filming went fairly smoothly. We started with the set facing the side of the room without the door, this involved shooting both characters as well having to manage to positions of the chest and table in the middle of the room.
Because Ben and I both wanted to shot mostly the wider shots and work in to the tighter ones, it meant that the lighting scheme was fairly 'basic', compared to what we had to do for some shots. This involved at it's height, when both characters were on screen, each of them having a strong key light (dedo), a slightly weaker fill (dedo), both of these lights were almost at ninety degrees to what ever the positions the camera was in, creating a strong and high contrast 'cross' effect. There was then also two kinos per side of the room as well as one in the middle creating a soft 'blanket' light to bring out the features of the objects in the room as well as the walls. These also helped soften the extreme lighting scheme on the actors faces.
When the day had started out I had intended to use a giant reflector suspended over the set, to act as a fill and general ambience light for the set, however this proved to awkward to work into such an small and intricate working space as well as far too time consuming be used throughout the shoot, I mad the decision to get rid of it and go with the three individual kinos as these were much easier to tweak and move about quickly when changing set ups.
Moving forward into the following day and we ploughed on, essentially ticking shots of the list in quite an efficient and robotic fashion. The main issue encountered during the second day was the issue of spatial relations and lens angles. As said in a previous post, because we had not been able to see or practice on the set before shooting began, the exact spatial relations between everything could not be anticipated and so shots were taking longer to get due to three variables being constantly changed. For example on the first day, when Michael wakes up in the room, a shoot not actually used in the final film but nether the less shot, we had to get the background of the room, michael on the floor through the legs of a table and the lights out of shot. This took considerable adjusting of the actor, the table, tripod height, camera angle and lens angle before I got something I was happy with.
Changing the set around so that it then became the door side of the room meant we began to be faced with more problems to overcome within our time budget. Most of these problems were to do with the set and working with its inadequacies, for example, the door was quite flimsy and so was the handle, so filming it in CU meant careful placements of crew members to hold and sturdy it when it was being pulled.
For me in the main, most problems arose from lighting. This was basically just problem solving, albeit very time consuming. Shadows cast where I didn't want them or levels that we not quite right or not in keeping with the grand scheme of the whole film. There was never any real quick fix to this, Ben, Henry and I would just stand on set, one on camera with another one of us on the relevant light adjusting by the eye of the person on camera.
Henry's role as a co-cinematographer on set was very helpful. Henry would always be on hand to give me advice, operate the camera when needed and just generally help me with setting up. We worked very fluidly together.
The first day of filming went fairly smoothly. We started with the set facing the side of the room without the door, this involved shooting both characters as well having to manage to positions of the chest and table in the middle of the room.
Because Ben and I both wanted to shot mostly the wider shots and work in to the tighter ones, it meant that the lighting scheme was fairly 'basic', compared to what we had to do for some shots. This involved at it's height, when both characters were on screen, each of them having a strong key light (dedo), a slightly weaker fill (dedo), both of these lights were almost at ninety degrees to what ever the positions the camera was in, creating a strong and high contrast 'cross' effect. There was then also two kinos per side of the room as well as one in the middle creating a soft 'blanket' light to bring out the features of the objects in the room as well as the walls. These also helped soften the extreme lighting scheme on the actors faces.
When the day had started out I had intended to use a giant reflector suspended over the set, to act as a fill and general ambience light for the set, however this proved to awkward to work into such an small and intricate working space as well as far too time consuming be used throughout the shoot, I mad the decision to get rid of it and go with the three individual kinos as these were much easier to tweak and move about quickly when changing set ups.
Moving forward into the following day and we ploughed on, essentially ticking shots of the list in quite an efficient and robotic fashion. The main issue encountered during the second day was the issue of spatial relations and lens angles. As said in a previous post, because we had not been able to see or practice on the set before shooting began, the exact spatial relations between everything could not be anticipated and so shots were taking longer to get due to three variables being constantly changed. For example on the first day, when Michael wakes up in the room, a shoot not actually used in the final film but nether the less shot, we had to get the background of the room, michael on the floor through the legs of a table and the lights out of shot. This took considerable adjusting of the actor, the table, tripod height, camera angle and lens angle before I got something I was happy with.
Changing the set around so that it then became the door side of the room meant we began to be faced with more problems to overcome within our time budget. Most of these problems were to do with the set and working with its inadequacies, for example, the door was quite flimsy and so was the handle, so filming it in CU meant careful placements of crew members to hold and sturdy it when it was being pulled.
For me in the main, most problems arose from lighting. This was basically just problem solving, albeit very time consuming. Shadows cast where I didn't want them or levels that we not quite right or not in keeping with the grand scheme of the whole film. There was never any real quick fix to this, Ben, Henry and I would just stand on set, one on camera with another one of us on the relevant light adjusting by the eye of the person on camera.
Henry's role as a co-cinematographer on set was very helpful. Henry would always be on hand to give me advice, operate the camera when needed and just generally help me with setting up. We worked very fluidly together.
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