Bottle Rocket: Valentina Shooting

On Thursday, the 1st of October, Bottle Rocket had its first official day of filming. We decided to use Steph’s house, in Carlton North, as our primary location. The house’s facade was a little decrepit – slightly flaky and/or crumbly in certain places, which was perfect for our intentions. The comedy of Valentina’s segment derives from the juxtaposition of her calm, professional demeanor with the crumbly/flakiness of her surroundings. The long hallway that met us as we opened the front door was similarly useful – we were able to decorate it with various bits of trash and empty beer bottles (as well as the unconscious figure of one of Steph’s housemates).

Further inside, we decided to utilize the kitchen as Valentina’s ‘confessional’ space, the area in which she would be interviewed by our intrepid filmmakers. This was actually my first experience of set dressing, as we had to set up this kitchen shot, inspect it through the camera, and then make any necessary adjustments. The idea was, this is a different location, so we had to make sure that signs of young, rowdy housemates were gone from the frame. I think that we pretty successful in this regard – it’s a small thing, but I was pretty happy with setting up a frame I was proud of. With Valentina’s costume change, the removal of certain fridge magnets, and the addition of a fruit bowl and some flowers, I think we really transformed that particular space.

Upon reflection, something that we needed to work on (and this was immediately apparent), was the time we gave ourselves to prepare. We landed at Steph’s place about an hour before the talent was due, and we probably didn’t start filming until an hour after she arrived. Assembling the camera/tripod alone took a good half an hour, while scouting out suitable locations inside and outside the house ate away into our time. I also think that even when we did start shooting, we initially had a few too many cooks in the kitchen – anytime Alexandra (our wonderful actress) had a question, there would be three or four us ready to chime in, and give our opinion. This went for the actual filming process as well – while Matt was behind the camera, both Steph and myself were constantly checking the frame. While at the time I thought this was supremely helpful, in retrospect I think that it just held us up a bit. Having said that, we were all fairly new to this process, so I think it’s understandable that we were a little hesitant to go ahead with anything before checking with the group.

Once we actually got going, things went fairly smoothly. Our actress was prepared and fit the character really nicely, while we had a decent understanding of how we wanted the scene to look. One thing I liked about the shoot was how we were able to incorporate spontaneous ideas. At one point, I had the idea that we could film some out of focus close-ups of Valentina, and lay our headings over the top of them. After running the idea past Matt and Steph, we just added this to the shot-list, and got it done. I think that sense of spontanteous production kept things fun and light, so that we weren’t bogged down by sticking exactly to what we had planned.

Something I was worried about coming into the shoot was exactly what the five of us would be doing on set. I’ve worked on professional crews before, full of twenty to thirty people all fulfilling a specific role, but on this shoot we only really had a camera with a screwed on shotgun mic – no lighting, no boom, no additional sound, no costume or make-up buses, just five befuddled Uni students. However, I was really happy with how we collaborated in the end. Matt took the camera (and checked with all of us at different times on things like framing and mise-en-scene), Steph had a little makeshift clapper board that helped me with taking down a shotlist that we could use in the editing process (with little notes on whether a scene was usable or not), Jess followed the script, ready to prompt Alexandra or give notes on continuity, and Ashton helped us out on all technical matters, while taking some behind-the-scenes set photos. Needless to say, it was also Steph’s house, and she had organised Alexandra’s participation, so she also acted as an actor/housemate wrangler, which was pretty important on the day. We also had the luck of having our own wardrobe/make-up person in the form of Steph’s Mum, who went through different costume options with Alexandra (and did a really good job, in my admittedly limited knowledge of these things).

Something else that presented as a problem was the light. For some reason, we just did not anticipate this – a massive mistake on our part. By about 4.00pm, shooting outside, the glare on the camera was intense, to the point where we could barely see the frame. We wasted a lot of time moving positions, discussing where/how to shoot, how it would look, how to adjust exposure, whether we could fix it in post – a lot of time wasted. Worst of all, we were mainly just sitting around while Alexandra and Steph’s Mum got her ready for the next sequence, when we could have been figuring this out. Not a mistake we’d make again. We wanted to film on the other side of the street, but the bloody permission permits (see the relevant blog post) denied us this luxury. Instead, we set up in the shadiest spot possible and hoped for the best. I think we really could have approached this problem better, instead of just basically giving up, but with a flagging battery, I understand why we had to move on. Still, something to work on for next time.