Week 7: Tuesday the 15th of April
Today was our first day of pre-production week and I wanted to sort out some key details before shifting the focus onto creative matters. So far, we had managed to lock in our production dates, which is a two day shoot. I think having a second day is always good because you have something to fall back on if the shoot is running behind, though I'm hoping we can film the bulk of it on the first day. We have also planned for a test shoot to play around with how the LED lights will work against the flood lights within the space. Additionally, and i'm not sure how it works as i'm bad with colour theory, but i'm skeptical that the masks might consume a lot of the light from the LED's so i'm aiming to have some kind of prototype of the mask ready that we can use during the test shoot.
Before class, I had a look at a potential location that we can shoot at which was the Old Nicholas Building located on Swanston street. I thought this location would be good to use as for one, the aesthetic of the place is quite old but beautiful at the same time. I also am trying to avoid filming at RMIT at all costs but will be using a location there as a backup. I pitched the Nicholas Building location to the rest of the team and we will be taking a proper look this Thursday.
Week 8: 28th of April
During the Easter break, my group and I decided to meet up for a test shoot. To the shoot, I bought an LED GO kit and a prototype of the mask, which was made out of white tissue paper, and a standard face mask as a base. Originally, I was worried that the colour of the mask would consume the LED's and I thought that if I made the mask white, it would not do that. Additionally, we were discussing the idea of having blue gels attached to the LED’s to create a bit of contrast, so the decision to have the mask be white was further reinforced as I thought (colour theory wise) the white and blue would complement each other.
However, when this mask was tested during the practice, it completely reflected off the light due to the brightness of the LED/bright colouring from the mask, resulting in the mask to look like a floating orb on the monitor. Because of this, we couldn't exactly test anything we wanted today, however this was good to know now rather than during filming. I have decided to dull the mask by either using tea bags or painting it a light grey.
Week 9: Tuesday the 6th of May
Today we had our second day of shooting. Originally, this was supposed to be a two day shoot, however we were having location issues on the first day which left us no choice but to cut Monday's shooting schedule. Fortunately, we were able to film the scenes that were set outside of the main location (hallway and the train scene). Additionally, each location only had one shot, so technically we did get two scenes filmed. Today was a little easier as we did get access to our main location, but we did have two scenes to film today. Going in, I was slightly relaxed as today's schedule only had sixteen shots. In the past, I found myself creating shot lists that might be a bit too ambitious in terms of shot count as I always would like to get more coverage than I need to. While this is important, I always feel like we would be rushing through shots, which wasn’t something I wanted to do this time round. When storyboarding, I realised that the shot’s itself weren’t exactly going to be crazy in terms of angles (each scene contained the standard wide, close up etc), but I also felt that this would be fitting in terms of having the story set in a dull office. Because the shots were simple, I directed the actors in a way where their performances would stand out against the bare set (more theatrical rather than realstic).
