The Set

Since the years earlier project, that was filmed on location in a café, I, and the group, have had the idea of shooting on a set in the back of our minds. There was the possibility that that film could of been shot on a set, however due to us quickly finding a suitable café with flexible hours in which to shoot in never transpired.

When the script for this project came around I thought straight away that it would benefit from being shot on a set. This was for many reasons. The script was very much set in a single room, but for the bathroom sequences. This meant finding a suitable room that we could both shoot in for an extended period as well as having it look the part. I for one  pushed the studio idea because I simply did not believe that is was possible to get a location for free that would let us both shoot for a couple of days for up to 8 hours a day and drastically alter the look of the room as well. The decision was made by Ben and Georgina to shoot on set.

I think that decision to shoot on a set was most dramatic on Joeley's job as art director, as she had to organising the building of the room of the film. However, the decision also meant a lot of things for me as cinematographer, some positive and some not so much.

1. Filming in a set meant I had total control of light, which I found very exciting and at the same time scary. It meant that I had total control of the look of the film in respect to camera and light design and Ben and I decided on a lighting scheme to reflect the feeling of the film we were trying to achieve. The design had to be simple and yet convey the weight of the situation the character was facing. It was decided by me that using a harsh cross lighting effect, with minimal back and fill lighting would create a dramatic tone that could be recreated relatively easily in most of the set ups.
2. Filming in the set meant that anything we wanted to achieve, we could do so because we were not limited by a locations peculiarities. To this end we were able to set up around eight lights for most of the shots, on location there simply would not have been the power capacity or space to do such a thing.
3. The limitations of the set impacted strongly in the framing up of shots. Because I was not able to practice on the set before hand it meant that the exact amount of space of the set floor and the size of the set could not be fully appreciated until being there physically, especially when bearing in mind how the angle of the different lenses we wanted to use changed how the room looked dramatically. Also because there was only so much wall (wall pieces) the shooting schedule was very back and fourth in the script which meant that Ben would constantly be having to direct the actors in relation to the mood of the relevant scene, costing time.

Overall, if I were to do the film again I would shoot again in the studio in a heartbeat, it afforded us a lot of creative control that I don't think would be available to us, at the budget we had, on location,