On the week starting the 5th February I completed my 3 day pre-light which was set in my 3 different locations. Not only was I completing a pre-light during these three days but I was also using the extra time to test out shots I hadn't had a chance to try yet and experimenting with recently formed ideas. I have prepared for these 3 days as evidenced in prior blog posts. Here are how the three days went:
Pre-Light 1
Pre-Light 1 took place on Monday 5th at 4pm till 8pm. This pre-light was for the body movement shots and this also doubled up as a rehearsal for our Dancer Molly who was joining us at 5pm. We met to pick up equipment at 3:45 as scheduled and entered into the studio at 4pm. I instructed the camera team to use two tables as there equipment tables and to set up and look over everything so that it was ready during the pre-light so that we could try as much out in this time as possible. While the camera team did this, myself and Sugini discussed the lighting plans we had spoken about. Meanwhile Katherine, Dan and Natasha my runners where clearing the studio space and helping unpack the lighting plugging it in and taping down wires etc. Myself and Sugini decided to use a black backdrop as we knew this would look a lot more contrasted and make the skin tones stand out more. We also wanted to make it look dramatic and we felt black was better for this. It would add variety in contacting with the white background of the infinity table in the other sections. We then began moving the lighting round and testing it out. I used Katherine as a stand in body in front of the backdrop while we tested the lighting out. We tried our original lighting plan which was to have one larger light as a fill light on the background and then one smaller feature light on the dancer. However this did not work as there wasn't enough contrast between shadows and highlights to give the dramatic effect we wanted. We decided to try one side light instead and this worked a lot better however it made a very bold shadow cast on the backdrop which broke the effect. We then tried pulling out the backdrop a lot more and having Katherine stand much further away from the background. This now eliminated the shadows. This was a lot more effective however the light was still slightly too bright so we decided to use ND filter No 6 on it and this worked really well giving the the lighting we really wanted. This is the set up we went with. Molly my dancer then arrived so I went over to speak to her. While I did this the camera team got the camera and themselves into the space and finished setting up while my runner finished taping down all the wires and clearing the space. I showed Molly the videos I used a inspiration when thinking about choreography and we discussed the idea of muscles testing and pushing and pulling. She really liked this idea and was ready to begin trying things out. We cleared the main filming space while Katherine helped her get ready as she was partially nude on the top half for this shoot. Katherine was then tasked with looking after her during this by giving her water, food and a dressing gown between takes. Dan was taken with keeping an eye on the door during shooting to stop people from walking in. When Molly was ready I then re-entered and briefed her on what we were going to do to begin with. Then the camera crew entered an et themselves up. We tried a wide variety of different movements focusing mainly on close ups of specific muscles and as discussed only the torso area was filmed. After each take Sugini was noting down technical notes of things to add and change on the shot list and I had Katherine writing notes for me about the dance movements we tried in each shot so when i reified it I knew which movements were successful. We tried a lot out and then at 7:30pm we began pack down while Molly got herself dressed. We also backed up the rushes onto myself and Ethans hard drive before leaving. We then loaded the car and left the studio clean and tidy at 8pm. This shoot and rehearsal was very successful as we managed to find movement which were very effective on camera and also worked out he best way to film a lot of shots which me and Sugini had discussed.
Pre-Light 2
On Tuesday 6th February we began Pre-Light 2 which was focusing on the infinity table. We had a lot of set backs on this day which made things stressful however we were still able to get everything tested and completed. We met at 9am and moved the equipment into the studio by 9:30am as planned. Katherine one of my runners was unable to make it and called me in the morning to let me know. I was already a runner down as well as Natasha had classes to attend. I was determined to carry on regardless with myself, the camera team and Dan as my only runner today. However once in the studio we found there was no infinity table in here even though we were told there was. I went to see the booking office and we were told to move one in from another studio which we did however this took a lot of time. While myself and Daniel and Ethan did this we left Sugini and Ethan setting up the camera. Once we had the table we all mucked in to get the camera set up as quickly as possible and then the lighting. We then had issues with one of our lights not working so had to take this to stores to have the bulb changed. Luckily we were able do continue with the other lights. We tried to follow a similar set up to what we used in Pre-Vis as we really liked this effect. We achieve this by having 2 large LED panels on the floor under the table lighting the table up very brightly and the we had one standing Arri light pointing across the top of the table to light the objects in a dramatic way. This is hard to achieve but we ,managed it last time. However this time we struggled as we were working with different smaller LED panels as before we used Sugini's personal LED's but these had since broken so now we were using two smaller LED's from the equipment hire stores. These weren't as effective but we tried our bets using lots of diffusion and raising them nearer the table. We then put a blue filter on the Tungsten Arri light for the objects to make it match up. I wasn't 100% happy with this lighting set up but due to a fire alarm going off leading to an evacuation we were now very behind schedule and had no more time to play around with lighting. We decided to go with this set up but have made the decision to get more or bigger LED's for the shoot and potentially even have tutorial with a technician and a final pre-light next week before the shoot if possible. We then moved onto to trying a lot of the new objects out and this was very exciting as some of them worked really well. Again myself and Suigni were keeping notes so we could review this together in a meeting afterwards to refine the shot list. As Dan was my old runner he also had to be my hand model for today. We got a really good flow on and managed to try everything we wanted. Once finished we again backed up onto myself and Ethan's hard drive and then packed up equipment and left the studio tidy. In spite of many stresses this morning I am happy we managed to move past this and complete everything planned on the schedule and even though we were unable to get the lighting perfectly how we wanted we have an action plan of how to fix this.
Pre-Light 3
Pre-Light 3 took place on Wednesday at 9:30am at my house. This shoot was of all the facial submerged shots of myself. As this was in my own bathroom with water on set I had a restricted crew of myself, the camera crew and one runner (Natasha). I cleaned the bathroom in preparation for the crew arriving and to keep things as safe a possible I removed any unnecessary items causing any kind of obstruction. The crew arrived at 9:30am and we began by unpacking the equipment we were using for the shoot today. This was mainly the GH4 as we weren't using the URSA for these as its too big and too much of a hazard around water. My runner Tash filled the bathtub up with water while we prepared. Myself and Sugini made the decision to use natural lighting for this as it was such a nice day that ti lit up the bathroom and my face so clearly exactly how we had imaged because we wanted these shots to be brighter to pick up the detail of the water and add variety. Because the lighting was nice today and we had very few shots for this section and a lot of time to do it in we decided to try out each shot on the list and because this is our most hazardous shoot due to the large amount of water if we managed to get all the shots filmed today we were going to review them and if they worked the way I wanted them to then we were going to use this footage and not worry about completing this again during the shoot week. Once set up and ready I go myself into the Bath tub of water. As I was now in front of the camera I trusted Sugini to lead things a lot more today as my DOP. We had already discussed this and were following the shot list so I knew exactly what I needed to do and then she was instructed the camera team on exactly what to do. Tash was there to pass my two lees between shots etc so I could keep warm and dry. We worked through all the shots and even added more in as we had time to try new ideas everyone had. We then finished up and backed up the footage and packed up the equipment. I was really happy with how today went as it flowed very smoothly with no problems and we were able to capture all the shots we wanted to a high standard.
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