Production - Production development
Project Development
In this blog post, I will be covering the key moments of change within our production leading up to shoot week, shoot week, and post-production. I will be covering moments where I discovered something that could potentially improve our film.
Location change and script changes that affected me
The first major change that happened during this production was the fact that our producer and director felt that our film was too optimistic. The original script included multiple locations and very complex VFX shots, which were well above our skill level. This change would really affect the progress of the work I have done up until this moment. Due to location changes and the script having changes meant that the location paperwork for the locations up until then have now become obsolete. This was not the only reason for a location change we had to change the location due to COVID-19 restrictions. We were hoping that through James' connection with the Isle of Sheppey police department and we were planning on using their training facilities to use as the main location as this location had everything we were looking for. However, that location fell through, which meant that all the planning I had done prior was now for the wrong location meaning I would have to redo all the planning (which was not an issue).
This meant that we needed a new location and new lighting and floor plans for the new location. Not having a concrete location meant that we needed to urgently find somewhere new that we could film. Due to all of the script changes we know knew that the story was going to take place in one location which made it easier for us. Knowing that we needed a new location I needed to find somewhere that would suit the story the best. Due to all of the covid restrictions, we found it incredibly hard to source locations as we had to be covid compliant. After receiving the final script changes the film was now going to be in one location, this meant that It was easier for me to find a location to best suit our film. With all the restrictions I found it incredibly hard to find a location (which was a house) to film in as there were too many restrictions put in place by the government. With this information. I set out to find a location perfect for our film when I had thought that it would be easier for our crew if we could potentially sleep and stay at the location. With this new information, I felt that the best place to film would be our house in Chatham. This location was perfect for our film as we knew the house inside and out due to us living here for the last year. Changing the location to our house was a great idea as it made it easier for us to access areas of the house that might have been locked off if we were to film somewhere else. The house also has enough room to store all of the equipment for me which then makes my job as the DoP easier. Another benefit reason for why moving the location to our house was better for me was because I now had access to all the locations at any time meaning that I was able to do vigours accurate test shoots for our film.
Test shoots
Test shoot 1 VFX:
The first test shoot was the most important as this was the stage of the unit where I still thought that having a VFX shot at the end of the film. This test shoot was very complicated as I struggled to get my head around how the camera should be placed and where the lights needed to be in order for the shot to work. I believe that what I was able to achieve in this test shoot was great. As it gave Ewan an opportunity to work with the footage to try and test whether the VFX shot would work.
As shown in the images above I took two different takes for this shot. The first take was to get Ethan to dangle his legs as if he was being beamed up into a UFO. In the second take, I got Ethan to stand in the same position and then got him to act the top half of his body. This was done so that when the footage is given to Ewan he can put the two clips together to hopefully create a shot where it looks like Ethan is being sucked into space. However, after this test shoot, I spoke to Ethan voicing my concerns about the shot and that I thought that if this shot doesn't look good then it can take the audience out of the action and it would ruin the entire movie. Ewan also voiced his concerns as he had never attempted anything like this before and he was worried that he would do it wrong and would ruin the film. This is when we all came to the decision to change how this section of the film is done to make it more believable for the audience. This was a major change and really changed the outcome of our final film because after this test shoot I had to research to find another way of achieving the same emotion but with a different shot, this lead me to research in-camera effects to replace the visual effects.
Test shoot number 2:
The second test shoot was a huge success as this was the key moment where I realised that the lighting for our film needed to change in order to accurately depicted to research I have done in this unit and the prior one. For this test shoot, I wanted to just get a feel for the shots I had planned out and to just get a look at how the film would potentially look. During this test shoot with Ethan, I decided that it would be good for me if we were able to film 2 whole scenes of our film the living room scene and the bathroom scene. I really wanted to get these scenes right as they were the first time's something supernatural happens and I wanted to be able to capture the scene perfectly. Below are two shots from the living room scene and bathroom scene shot with Ethan.
As you can see from the images above this was the outcome of the living room test shoot. I really liked this test shoot i felt that the framing i had planned for this film works really well with being uncomfortable for the audience to watch, however, i was not happy with the lighting within the scene. For me the lighting felt flat and each shot looked two-dimensional which is bad. This meant that i needed to work on a solution to try and make our film look better. This is when Ethan and I spoke about adding more depth and colour to the film, this then lead us to both look into potentially buy RGB changing bulbs. If this test shoot never happened then i wouldn't have solved the issue and our film would've looked flat. Below are a few shots from the shoot week and by first glance the shot looks a lot better.
As you can see in the screenshots above shows the depth the RGB bulbs brought to our production value. The RGB bulbs added do much more to each shot and i tried to match the colour of the lamps to the tone each scene had. for example, in the living room scene our character has just woke up from a nightmare and is scared, so to match his emotion I put the colour as red so that the adueince knew that something bad happened, but they wont know if it was real or not. So red subconsciously makes humans think of danger, this is where all the research on the psychology of colour really came into account as i jnew exactly what effect each colour would have on the audience.
Overall the first test shoot was a huge success this is because during the Test shoot i was able to discover and solve problems before the actual shoot week. If i didn't do this test shoot then our final film would've looked blanned and boring compared to all of the research i have done showing my journey in trying to make this film. The added addition of RGB bulbs added so much more depth and emotion to our film i now understand how important lighting is for the narrative, which is an area i have always struggled with understanding. I feel like this unit has really made me improve my knowledge and understanding of light and this is shown in our final edit.
The second scene i filmed was the bathroom scene, this was an important scene to plan as this was going to be the moment where our character discovers a probe in his anus. From the test shot images below you can see that yet again the shots looks flat due to the lack of lighting and colour. Which meant that i needed to plan more colour within the scene. I knew that during this scene i wanted the audience to feel like the character is in danger and that he is going mad due to his discovery. So for this scene i knew i wanted to have a green tone as it can represent darkness, danger, and corruption. As well as green i also wanted a yellow tone as this colour has a psychological effect that makes the adueince think that our character is mad and sick.
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| Test shoot Bathroom scene with Ethan |
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| Shoot week Bathroom scene 1 |
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| Shoot week Bathroom scene 2 |
Test shoot 3 (Projector)
After doing research we discovered that a projector can create different lighting that can be put onto any surface. This concept is a very good idea as we could use the projector and find some glitching effects and to play them onto the actors face. I got the idea through Ethan as he was surfing through Youtube when he discovered the FilmRiot tutorial where they look into the perks of having a projector. This video showed us some really creative lighting choices and when we saw them we immedityl knew what purpose the projector would have for our film.
For this test shoot, I just wanted to see what I was able to capture only using the projector as the main source of light, I did this so that I would know how much more light I would potentially need for using this in shoot week.
Below are the images take from the test shoot.
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| Projector being used for the shoot week |
Planning camera movements
I managed to test out one camera movement which was the zoom dolly. I really struggled with getting a good take of this shot as I did not have the correct equipment to be able to pull off the shot. However, this did not stop me from finding a way of achieving this shot. Normally, when trying to achieve the zoom dolly the camera would be placed onto a dolly with tracks this allows the camera to move smoothly which makes the movement clearer to watch. I was not able to get this equipment out due to them all being hired out for the second years. So this meant that I had to get creative with how I was going to capture the zoom dolly. To do this I went bought a cheap plastic transportation aid (the same thing mechanics will use to easily roll around under the car) as the dolly. I then would lay flat on the homemade dolly and use my feet to push myself closer to the object I was trying to film. It was a good job I did this because I soon found out that this shot would be too complex to achieve within the house and there would not be enough room to put the equipment out, this meant that I had to re-think all of the camera movements for the film.
Above are screenshots taken from the test shoot with the zoom dolly. Overall the concept and the idea worked well I was able to get a zoom dolly, however, due to me not having any stabilisation equipment the shot was very shakey and ruined the effect I was trying to do. This means that this shot will be cut from the production if I can find a way to do it to a high standard this is because I don't want half good shots in our film. If the shot is not up to the standard I want it to be then it will not be used.
I began to slowly run out of time to do any test shoots due to personal reasons. This was a bad scenario as I then did not have enough time to test certain movements within the film. However, just because I couldn't test I still made sure that I planned the camera movements properly within my lighting plans. As shown below whilst I was creating my lighting plans I was also thinking about potential movement. If I didn't sit down and vigorously plan these camera movements the shots wouldn't have worked. For example, if I turned up to a professional shoot and I did not have a clue how the camera was meant to move this would waste the production companies money, which would result in me getting fired from the production. I know that in a professional work environment that these test shoots are just as vital as the rest. I feel like the planning I produced was a good starting point, however, for the future, I would need to actually do the test shoots in orders to get more accurate information about how the film will look.
As you can see from the images above here are the camera movement plans that I drew up for shoot week. I feel like this was a good idea as it gave me an idea and an understanding of how the camera will move from different areas of the house. Without this plan, I would be lost during shoot week trying to work out how everything should be placed within the scene. Even though I haven't done a test shoot I believe these plans will be enough to make sure that no time is lost when having to problem-solve issues that hadn't been planned.
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