Viewing the shots

Aisling and Gery have uploaded all of the footage I shot and I’ve managed to have a look at most of it. From what I see I think it’s all good work so I can rest assured I did my job well. Funnily enough my next step now is to switch my collaborative role to editor in this very project so I will be working with my own shots now in postproduction.

Relevant hyper links:

Original shot of wind chime moving into black screen wipe edit point

https://vimeo.com/129067491

Fully edited wind chime sequence as it appears in the final film (begins at 00-06-24)

https://vimeo.com/128870570

Problems problem!

Last Thursday we were scheduled to shoot Sai’s remaining scenes but we had to cancel on the last day’s shoot but it is apparently proving difficult to get her on set. I’ve just gotten official word that the scenes have to be re shot tomorrow. Wednesday is the one day of the week that I can’t work because I need to look after my young daughter. I’ve asked the girls if there is any chance we can do a different day but it appears it’s not an option. This means I will not get to shoot the remaining scenes of the film, which I’m not at all pleased about. However c’est la vie, and I at least feel I performed well in my role to date as cinematographer on this film. I just hope the material they will shoot themselves tomorrow matches the style and look of the shots I have filmed up to now well.

The Shoot - Day 3

Today was due to be the last day of shooting but Sai, the actress playing Anita, is unfortunately unwell so we had to omit her scenes from the shooting schedule which will need to be rescheduled for a later date.

We were shooting in Aisling’s family home, which acted as the Mittel household. With Sai’s scenes postponed the scenes we filmed today were - Paul’s arrival at the house to pick up Anita’s remaining things; the awkward moment in the kitchen when Manoj makes tea for him; Paul making his decision to go and speak his mind to Manoj; and the scene in Anita’s empty bedroom where both men meet before coming to an understanding.

We shot the bedroom scene first which from a cinematography perspective, I found to be both a satisfying and rewarding experience. For the shots in which Paul and Manoj acknowledge each other’s presence we utilized a full-length mirror. We filmed full and mid shots of each actor’s reflection in the mirror as well as corresponding direct shots of them. This way we can alternate each shot to best effect in the edit. Creatively I thought the result worked really well and I am generally interested in the inventive use of mirror reflections in shots because it can create a whole new visual perspective in terms of depth of field and the use of hard/soft focus. We also filmed my wind chime passing trick shot, which seemed to work fine.  All will now depend on how well it connects with the impending corresponding shot.

The remaining shots in the kitchen went well and were relatively straight forward to film. I arranged for the primary establishment shot of both Paul and Manoj at the kitchen table to be shot from a good distance back by placing the camera in the adjacent dining room and shooting through the adjoining doors. I based this decision on how they shot the family dinner scenes in the film American Beauty (1999). In that film the effect is that the audience feels almost voyeuristic watching a dysfunctional family unit from a certain vantage point and I thought that effect would work well in enhancing both men’s discomfort in each other’s presence.

The last shots of the day covered Paul sitting at the table drinking tea before deciding to man up to Manoj. We got a lot of coverage of this scene because it’s all action and no dialogue and we’ll want a few different options to make it work well. All in all a good day’s shooting.

The Shoot - Day 2

I have to say I found today’s shoot very enjoyable. We spent the whole day shooting in a converted attic that acted as Paul’s bedroom. The three scenes in the script that take place in this location are when Paul and Anita cuddle on the bed following the first row with her father, when Paul eats alone watching TV and when he is packing his things to move out before Anita calls over in tears.

Each of the scenes take place at night so we needed to black out a skylight using bin bags and I then bounced the light from a low positioned tungsten light off a wall to mimic the glow from a television set. This worked very well and the camera was happy (I’ve learnt this year that the Sony NEX–EA50 shows its like and dislike of certain scene lighting rather starkly!). The effect was complete when Colm, our soundman, had the rather clever idea of flicking a torch on and off to mimic the flickering light of a TV screen. I have to say I was pretty impressed with how well the overall result looked.

Here are some pictures of me in action!

We finished the day by shooting a very precisely choreographed tracking shot and an interesting shot of Paul packing clothes into a box, which I film from within the box looking out as the actors Cillein threw clothes on top of me. All in a day’s work! 

The shoot - Day 1

The first day of shooting went well. The schedule was relatively straightforward in terms of the shot list and it was a nice for me to finally see and get a feel for the production design, which right from the early stages of preproduction was such an integral part of this film.  I also met with the actors for the first time. I enjoy meeting and making a rapport with the cast at the beginning of a project as I always find it makes for a much more beneficial and rewarding process for all involved.

We shot in Gery’s family home, which acted as the location for Anita and Paul’s new house in the story. We shot the final scenes of the film first and then worked back towards the remaining two scenes that also take place at that same location. The shooting plan for today consisted mainly of shots to establish that the couple is moving into a new home as well as a key conversation and the film’s denouement when Anita and her father are reconciled.

Overall I am happy with how things went. I am a little concerned about how well a focus pull shot will prove to have worked out when viewed on a bigger monitor. It was the very first shot of the day and I would have liked to have a bit more time to practice it before going for a take. Such are the teething problems of the first day of shooting though I guess! 

Shot list, storyboards and attempting a tricky shot!

I met with Aisling and Gery today to discuss the shot list and storyboards. I had some ideas for shots myself and I knew Aisling would too, as she was pretty well organized in that department on the last film.

Whilst I was on location shooting my own film over the past week, Gery had drawn storyboards for the first act of the film, which was a great help on two fronts – (a) storyboards are a very clear, illustrated way to help understand the shot grammar and (b) I simply can’t draw them!

I had an idea recently for a particular pair of shots that would involve some camera trickery and I was looking forward to putting it out there to the girls at the meeting to see what they thought. I saw a little known modern western from the 1990s about a year ago called Lone Star (1996). It used an interesting device to take the story into flashbacks that relied on camera movement and hidden cuts instead of the usual ‘narrated cut’ or ‘dissolves’. In one scene for example, part of a wall in a bar is used to block the frame so it appears that an unbroken panning shot takes the audience into a flashback that happened at the same location 30 years previously. In another scene the camera tilts up from a character’s face to a night sky, which then acts as an edit point to begin a new shot that tilts down to the same character when she was much younger. Again, the effect is that one continuous shot takes us into the past.

There is a scene in Colour Blind in which the father in the story takes down a wind chime from a hook that belongs to his daughter and it pains him because she is moving out. My idea is to film the wind chime moving downwards and then continue the shot passed it, stopping at a black object that completely fills the frame. Then at a later stage we would film the reverse shot, starting in black, and then tracking the same wind chime passing into a young girl’s hand. The desired effect in the edit will be to give the impression that the wind chime passes directly from its hook into a memory of when he first gave her the chime in one continuous fluid movement. I just hope Aisling and Gery like the idea and that it works.