Filming Day 2

Filming Day 2

Today was one of the most important days for us; we would be shooting the woodland scenes which had to be cinematic, these shots I think would make or break our film. I can confirm however I am happy with what we captured!

We started the day at 5pm The reason for the late start, was because we no longer needed to capture a scene down by the river, as after a thorough scouting by us it was full up with cow faeces and was quite honestly ‘rank’. Archie and Kasha tried looking at another river nearby in Winscombe, but as it has been relatively dry over the last two weeks before filming, this river had dried up too much. So, we thought about what we can do to replace this scene with another. Archie had the bright idea of not adding a new view but deepening another.

The new plan was to borrow my Dad’s axe, luckily, he let us use it and even better it had a wooden handle not one of the plastic ones which some newer axes utilise. Also, by taking away the river scene, we added a more masculine scene and we also realised that if we had gone with the scene in the river with the two brothers’ fooling about, the viewer might have thought they were gay. This would not have been a huge deal, but it just wasn’t the look we were going for.

The idea had now been changed, and it was not 5pm. Time to start the shoot! We all met at my house in Wrington, waited for one another to turn up and then made our way in Archie’s car to my Grandma’s woods just behind her house. I unlocked the gates, and we managed to drive Archie’s car right into the woodland. We should have thought twice about doing this though as if his car had broken down in the woodland, he would not have been covered by his insurance, something I have only just thought of! Anyway, we got out all my equipment and soon enough the filming was underway, we began by finishing off the transition, where I walk anti-clockwise around a tree, and I emerge behind Archie and Joel, I think this shoot came out rather well, after the re-shoot, this was as Archie’s hair was not down the first time. After this we got a shot of them throwing their leather jackets onto two metal rods that were sticking out of an old train carriage, now we decided to shoot with the train carriage, as it was in the 70s wherein the UK many of the trains throughout the country were being shut down! This adds further deeper meaning to our already jam-packed story.

We then got Joel to chop up some logs that we conveniently found, as my Uncle uses these woods for building with wood, so there was plenty of wood lying around. Back to the filming, I got some slow-motion shots of the logs being sliced through like butter with the axe; I shot this with kasha holding an extra light as I was shooting at 96fps. After this, we captured some shots of them building a fire and that was it for part one of the woods.

At around 7pm we were finished up the woods for part one, we would return there at approximately 8:30pm to finish the filming. Now we had to film the Robbery at my Grandma’s house; we started by shutting all the shutters and curtains and turning on the various lights around the two rooms where we were filming. We could not shoot the entrance shots until it was dark, so what we decided to do was return back after filming part two up the woods, as by then it would be pitch black, I asked my Grandma (Eira) if she was ok with this and she said yes, so we were off to the races!

Shooting began at around 7:15pm, the plan was for me to walk around the two rooms following Joel and Archie inspecting and stealing various items from the house, we needed to re-shoot a few bits as we were unsure where we wanted to hide the fake 70s money we had printed. We eventually came to an agreement where Archie would pull it out from underneath a dresser. When we shot this, it looked good from my perspective, especially when Joel fans the money he finds in a drawer and Archie takes a chunk of it out of a small box. That was pretty much it for this scene Archie and Joel looking around the room which we re-shot about four times, but hey ho, the end clip was worth the re-shoots.

We drove back to the woods, lit the fire and began setting up the scene where we would film Archie and Joel playing cards inside the train carriage. I started by positioning Kasha who was holding the bi-colour lights onto the deck of the carriage to light up the cards and create a silhouette around Joel’s and Archie’s heads. The lighting, in my opinion, was the best I have ever captured in my whole five years of experience. I was stunned. The first shot was a pan down from the sky which turned into a mid-shot of Archie and Joel all lit up next to each other playing cards. I then switched up the position of the camera to a top-down shot looking over the cards; I loved how you could see each grain of the wood when looking back at the shot. The image was sharp with no grain as it was adequately lit by Kasha and I was filming using the wide f1.7 aperture. After this I rotated the camera to the right, to a close-up looking at Archie from the right side looking left, his silhouette looked, stunning with the light, it was almost as if it was professionally lit, even though we were only using some cheap bi-colour lights I found on eBay! After this, I rotated the camera again to the left side looking right at Joel, though I do not think this shot seemed as good as the one of Archie’s as, on him was just a little reflection coming off his nose ring this looked ‘magnifico’!

After these shots, I captured the ones of Archie and Joel pretending to take/do drugs around the fire, to emphasise this, before filming I bought a glass prism off Amazon to bring out all the colours of the white and orange light of the fire. The prism was tricky to position in front of the 42.4mm lens as I was holding, both the camera (handheld) and moving the prism in front of the camera. The actors pretend to act high, (from drugs) which I found hilarious. We then mounted the 42.5mm lens GH4 back in the fluid head tripod and shot close-ups of Joel taking eye drops (which contained water), and a pan down of Archie’s face which revealed him sticking a square sugar paper on his tongue then closing his mouth. These shots came out rather well, and we decided it was time to move onto the second last scene.

This Next scene was tricky for me as I could only use the 12mm lens, which only opened to an aperture of 2.8, and we would be shooting in pitch black… To combat this challenge, I cranked the iso on the camera up to 600 which I knew would introduce some grain, but I needed the light, slowed the shutter speed down to 25 (down from 50) and made the bi-colour lights cooler to match the blue tone of Archie and Joel’s torches. This was just enough light to get the running shots where Archie and Joel are running back to the fire from the Robbery. In the end, the result of this painstakingly long lighting setup, was worth it.

Finally, we shot the establishing shot of my Grandma’s house in pitch-black darkness. This was to bring blue moonlight back into the scene, which made the same change to my camera from an earlier shot up the woods (25fps, shutter speed 25, iso 600 and extra blue bi-colour light). The establishing shots were excellent as well as the breaking into the house shots. Then the last shot was Archie and Joel running into the woods; this was re-shot twice, as luckily, I picked out you could see one of the lights in the shot occasionally in the first two.

Overall though a brilliant night of filming despite the 11.30pm finish time! It was worth it, and I am pretty sure what I shot today was some of my best cinematography to date — what a night.