Shoot Day Two

The second day of shooting we met at stalls to pick up equipment:

1. Two Canon 305
2. Two tripods
3. Zoom
4. Sennheiser 416
5. Slider
6. Reflector
7. Kino light
8. Dedo light kit
9. Dedo filters

We then headed to the first location the church on Chapel Walk we had half an hour to set up before the actor arrived, I had seen a shot in a film called Cashback that I was keen to try, we hadn’t planned to film it but I discussed it with the rest of the group and there where happy to do so. I thought it would be a great introduction to both character and location.

We decided to film on two cameras for the opening shot, we set the camera up making sure the white balance was the same (About 5500K), that both cameras where filming on 25 frames per second and 1080p. One camera was static and the other panned down from the celling, the shot was quite complicated, as there where two different exposures. This meant as we panned down we had to change from F/8 to F/5.6.  This meant that as the character got closer she was out of focus due to the shallow depth of field, as I panned down Elliot changed the aperture and then the focus. We decided to film a couple more shots on the sliders but these didn’t work as well as this first shot.

The basement where we where filming was very small making the lighting set up a little bit difficult. We wanted the lighting to be very low key like in Disturbia, still keep that basement feel but still able to see everything.

The lighting setting proved to be quite a challenge, as we wanted to keep it quite authentic so the only light entering the basement was from the door up stairs. The first couple of shots where the character walks down stairs wasn’t a problem but once we tried to film the rabbit/man in the cage, there just wasn’t enough light. We decided that as the women walked down the stairs that she could then switch on a light. I wasn’t a huge fan of this idea but I couldn’t seen any other way.



Paul had brought a T.V light that created this really cool effect for the end final shot where we see the rabbit watch T.V while the women is in the cage. The final shot the rabbit stands up drops his mask and turns of the lights (lighting change). The T.V light creates this really cool effect on the mask. The last couple of shots we had to film where all the POV shots I volunteered myself to get in side the cage and film them, the cage was quite small and was quite difficult to see what i was filming.

It wasn’t until we got to the edit that we realised that we had made a fundamental error of not checking the gain on either cameras, this meant that a lot of the clips where un usable because the shots where just too grainy. This meant on tomorrow shoot we had to re film most of what we did today. When looking at the 305 footage the colours seemed really flat and didn’t cope well with low level lighting. I decided then that I would book out a 5D mark iii just to grab a couple of cut aways for tomorrows shoot, ive used a 5D before and with a 50mm lens its great in low lighting. I was very frustrated with todays shoot something so simple can ruin a days filming.