REFLECTION 13 – PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT

So during our pre-production period, as the Director of Photography I had to help arrange the all the technical equipment we would need for our shoot. I started with the basics, but then realised that I had resources from the tech office that I hadn’t used before. So after a few talks with Robin about the type of lighting and camera I would like to use, we discussed different ways I could light the setting. Like I mentioned in my previous reflection, I wanted to do something more interesting with two people sitting at a table. It didn’t need to be anything too spectacular, but I didn’t just want us lighting the set just for the sake of lighting. Robin helped us by suggesting we have a lamp source in the film, something to help indicate that it was night-time, and the use of lamps was a genius choice. No regular person uses lamps during the day, so we jumped straight on and in the edit suites played around with some LED lite panels on a C-stand and trialed what kind of lighting it would be. It would need to have a lot of diffusion, and something around the light to keep the barn doors tight. Core board and even black cloth were a possible alternative to help keep the light isolated like a spotlight, and after being briefed quickly about the benefits of shooting our dinner table like this I was hooked.

But it’s one thing to have an idea in your head, and another completely different thing to see it in action, on location with the set. And so I decided to have a test shoot day, with some of the equipment we were going to use, and see how the environment would work with the lights. It wasn’t anything grand, bit it did let me scope out the location before the shoot date, and also have a technical rehearsal as well.

On the day I was able to see where camera’s could be places, where light stands and c-stands could be placed, and whether the overhanging LED panel would work on our dining table at Hannah’s place. What we discovered during this testing day was that the c-stand would only extend about a third of the way across the table, instead of the halfway point we were hoping for. This problem was a bit unfortunate, but did give us something to work on, because that meant we were either going to have to find some creative ways around shooting the dinner scenes in specific ways, or hope for a longer c-stand arm.

What we ended up doing though was completely different to anything I have ever worked with on set. After consulting the tech office about a longer arm, they gave me a pole cap, which essentially was a long pole you secure at the top of two c-stands and extend out across a distance longer than 2 c-stand arms. It was a great solution to our problem, and I am so thankful that we had enough time to go to the location to figure out these problems. Test shooting has never been a high concern for me before, but for the aesthetic we wanted to achieve we needed the hardware as well, and in the end I a happy to have spend a day practicing shots and angles ahead of the shoot date. The whole experience helped me get a better understanding of what the final film would look like, and also help us plan accordingly, because now we know how much time we need to bump equipment in, and set up all the different lighting set-ups.