I had plenty of improvements and new tests I wanted to carry out in my revised sketch of my interrogation scene. After testing different lights and lighting set-ups in class, I decided to use the Dedo light to illuminate the victim against the very dark setting. The Dedo was the appropriate choice for my scene as it can be modified to create a small or larger spotlight and the brightness can also be adjusted accordingly. The barn doors on the light also gave me more control in lighting the offside of the victim’s face.

In my last shoot, I didn’t do much written pre-production which meant that I became a bit confused as to what shots I wanted or still needed to do on the day. Therefore, I decided to write more detailed notes in terms of what shots I wanted, but also a basic floor plan to understand eye-lines and maintain lighting continuity.

These notes and plans were very helpful on the day, and allowed me to feel more confident in positioning and framing my shots.

Unfortunately, due to the availability of the people in my scene, I couldn’t film at night as I originally planned. This meant that the room was not as dark as I wanted it to be as blacking out the high windows posed a danger. The sunlight that came through the windows meant that I couldn’t completely achieve the really dark setting with one light source (dedo) that I intended to. In my future shoots, I will be filming at night to see how the dedo works and if I can achieve the lighting I initially wanted, or whether I need to implement multiple lights to achieve this look.

I will also be using the EX3 as the Canon 650D seemed to struggle in low-lighting and therefore it resulted in having grain in my video which I don’t want to have in my ‘final scene’. The DSLRs have been useful so far in allowing me to test out different set-ups, shots and experiment with all of these, however I have continued to have issues with them throughout the past few weeks. From having custom white balance problems to grain/noise, sometimes they have been more of a hassle than a help. I hope that the EX3 will be much easier to use, especially since I am more familiar with the settings on it compared to the 650D.

As you can see, from my shot list and floor plan, I did modify some of my shots on the day due to the location and equipment. The dizzying perspective shot that I wanted to test out (shot 4) didn’t work out on the 650D as tracking and zooming in the opposite direction was very difficult to do with this equipment so instead I just used a low-angle shot from the victim’s perspective of the captor coming through the door. However, I would like to add more drama to this moment of the scene and so I want to try the tracking and zooming in opposite directions with the EX3 and/or experiment with different sized shots of this moment. The panning shot of the captor walking towards the victim was inspired by the similar shot in Casino Royale, however due to the location I couldn’t achieve this as there was a lot of stuff in the background that would distract from the shot. I will try this shot though and cover the mess with sheets/blankets or try and ‘cheat’ the shot around so I can get this dynamic shot. I wanted to also experiment with focus pulling specifically in this shot and will do so in my next shoot. The close-up of the victim’s hands didn’t work out how I would like as the background is distracting and the believability of the victim’s hands being clenched together didn’t work.

Despite not shooting at night, I was quite happy with the effect the dedo light gave compared to the last scene I filmed. Lighting the offside of the victim’s face allowed for interesting shadows that were especially dynamic in the low-angle medium-close up of the victim. Having a lighting source also allowed me to experiment with characters moving in and out of the light, something I particularly liked in the Casino Royale scene, and created a mood and tone that previously wasn’t there.

The sound design is very basic in this version and in my future versions I will be implementing sound fx, music and a more dynamic atmos track.

During editing, I didn’t work from a storyboard or really have a specific idea of how I would edit the shots together. I just took it step by step, picking the best takes of the shots and then deciding in which order I would like to show them. What I found most interesting during editing was discovering interesting ways to cut between the shots, keeping the lighting continuity in mind. I tested out dropping the opacity frame by frame to create the effect of the fluoro light flickering, however I found that it was too distracting and didn’t add anything to the scene so I didn’t include it.

Including the lighting source, and the medium-close up of the victim added a whole other dimension and depth to my scene that was previously missing, and this scene is much closer to my vision than the previous sketch.

https://vimeo.com/128331287