Reflecting on the experience of shooting my first short film.
This week I had the chance to finally put myself and my camera onto some narrative work and shoot a short film for a friend in the screen writing course at RMIT. The process of shooting this short taught me so much about this kind of work in such a short space of time that it will probably be very difficult to get it across in just a single reflection – but regardless I’ll try anyway! I got involved in this project very late (only a week or two before we were due to begin production) after making a passing comment on a shoot last week about how I was looking for more work to put on my showreel. This left me with very little time to prepare for the shoot, which in hindsight is something I would definitely like to avoid wherever possible in future – or at the very least use the limited time I had to prepare more effectively so that I can make the most out of the production time. My late addition to the crew meant I didn’t really get to have much input into locations and production design – something which I found to be a challenge when it came to shooting and especially lighting a great deal of the film. A lot of the script takes place within a conference room, which the producer and director had a hard time finding with no budget to pay for a location, which lead to us shooting in a very small meeting room on campus at RMIT. This created a challenge for me, as I had very little room to position lights and a small white room which created no shape in the lighting at all. Luckily I had a couple hours in the morning to just maneuver lights and see what was possible in the space – ultimately (and to my own discomfort) I ended up struggling to light it using the dedo kit I had intended to use, instead I had to shoot an LED panel into the roof and then shape it as needed with a cutter. This resulted in all honesty with a look that was serviceable, but really not as aesthetically pleasing as I had hoped.
The second day of the shoot however, gave me a great deal more maneuverability with the lighting setup and a far less restrictive space. These scenes were supposed to be taking place at night within the lead characters bedroom. Lighting for a night scene is not something that I had done before, so just like the first day I spent the first hour or two before we started shooting just experimenting with different lighting setups until I found a look I was rather pleased with. The set in this case was the directors bedroom on the second floor of his house, which ordinarily would create difficulties in lighting without a budget or much equipment as it would be difficult to position lights outside windows – however I was very fortunate that there just happened to be a balcony close enough to the window for me to setup a dedo that would essentially be emulating a streetlight coming in through the window and blinds to create shafts of light on the lead actor. I then positioned another dedo behind a cutter (which was stopping any spill from hitting the subject directly) and shot it directly into the roof – this was essentially filling in the shadows created by dedo that was aimed directly through horizontal blinds, as I found the image to be far too contrasty and distracting without fill. Both of these lights had full CTB gel on to try to emulate a sort of moonlight or failing that at least streetlight look. Considering I went into the second day of this shoot without even having seen the space we would be shooting in, I was really quite pleased with the results and honestly think this is some of the best footage I’ve shot to date.