This week my group – Aine, Quinlan, Sam and Darcey – presented our ides for our film project to the class. The basic premise for the shoot was to shoot at night, to utilise bright neon lights, to light scenes within a car and to have characters leave on location and move to the next. Darcey suggested that we shoot at Magic Mountain Saloon in the city as it has beautiful neon lights as well as plenty of car spaces out the front of the venue and a carpark next door. Darcey having worked for Magic Mountains parent hospitality company has connections to people that work there and could get approval for us to film at this location, as well as book a table for the nights we wanted to shoot there.

Essentially the scene will begin with our characters inside Magic Mountain Saloon exchanging dialogue, they will then leave this location and move to their car. For the scenes at the car we will have to recreate the lighting present at Magic Mountain by adding various lights with coloured gels, such as an LED light with a red gel to use as a strong key light and perhaps another LED light with a blue or white gel as a subdued fill light that could imitate either moonlight or streetlight. My group was extremely influenced by the work of Dario Argento and Nicholas Winding-Refn or should I say their cinematographers Luciano Tovoli and Natasha Braier who worked on Suspiria and Neon Demon. Creating extremely dramatic and dynamic looking images with bright neon lighting. Somehow both these cinematographers have managed to create images that look extremely overdone (in terms of colour) but do not take you out of the reality of the film, which is a hard task to master. In line with the scene of Suzy (Jessica Harper) sitting the car, we were interested in adding texture to the windows such as rain or snow, to make the shoots look even more interested and blur the background even more. However it might be unwise to do just that, as it could mean we’d need all the other shots to also look rain or snow effected which may add to much extra work if it doesn’t happen to rain on the day. To align with Robin’s idea to film another version of our projects under different conditions, we suggested that we could film the same scene at daylight comparing how we lit the night scene to the day scene as they would both be extremely different.

Suspiria, 1977 directed by Dario Argento and DP’ed by Luciano Tovoli.

Neon Demon, 2016 directed by Nicholas Winding-Refn and DP’ed by Natasha Braier.

I really love the idea of working with Neon light as I love the films of Dario Argento and Nicholas Winding-Refn so I’m really looking forward to getting a storyboard together and working out how we’re gonna shoot this thing.

Until next time,

Louise Wilson

Week 8 – Reflection: http://www.mediafactory.org.au/louise-wilson/2018/05/27/week-8-reflection/

Week 9 – Reflection: http://www.mediafactory.org.au/louise-wilson/2018/05/27/week-9-reflection/

Week 10 – Reflection: http://www.mediafactory.org.au/louise-wilson/2018/05/27/week-10-reflection/

A Look Back – Reflection: http://www.mediafactory.org.au/louise-wilson/2018/05/27/a-look-back/

Practical Project 1: http://www.mediafactory.org.au/louise-wilson/2018/05/27/practical-project-1/

Practical Project 2: http://www.mediafactory.org.au/louise-wilson/2018/05/27/practical-project-2/