Today is the second last shooting day in our first film project. We are shooting the indoor scenes that show how the female character is struggling without her boy friend, know her phone call is what caused her boyfriend’s death, her mentality starts to get unstable. Facial expressions, composition and lighting are very important for today’s shooting.

 

For preparation, I borrowed 2 LED panels from RMIT. The brightness and color temperature can be changed, which is very helpful. I also borrowed a 24-70mm F2.8 lens, because we are shooting indoor, having a lens that can cover a big focal distance that also has a big aperture is very convenient.

 

For this part, I planned to have a scene that has multiple images of her walking around in the room, to show her struggles. Constantly sitting on the sofa and standing up to walk around. This scene is inspired by David Lynch, I think this scene can show her anxiety inside and how she doesn’t know what to do. I also planned a scene of her taking drugs, and the table is also full of drugs, it’s a little dramatic but I think being messy and emotional also represents her mood at that time.

 

In this part of the film, we also have a transition of her finally losing her sanity and become mentally unstable. First she was just struggling, thinking about the past, but then, the scene showing her stepping down the stairs in the dark, and her weird smile will represent her finishing the transition. The stairs is a representation of the path to the darkness here.

 

One of the most difficult scenes will be a close-up on her face and all of a sudden the light goes very bright and the scene will be over-exposed. I tried to do the lighting by changing the brightness of the LED panel, however the speed is to slow, it will take about 5 seconds to go to maximum brightness. So we put a blue towel in front of the light and when the time comes I will just lift the towel. The result is very nice, I like how it looks and the lighting is successful.

 

I am very happy with the shooting today. Everything went according to plan, the scenes look very very nice. We successfully communicated what we tried to show in the video. Because we are now more familiar with the lighting and cameras, the process was really smooth. There is nothing to complain about this shooting. Next week we will shoot the last scene at Melbourne Star because they closed for a short period of time earlier.