Production Diary of a Cinematographer: The Sweeney Todd Shoot
This is the day I have been waiting (and preparing) for the entire module! Today was the day we finally filmed the Sweeney Todd commercial. However, we had a couple of issues to overcome until we would be able to send off roughly 300f of 16mm footage.
A Quick Recap
In the past week, we’ve already put up the lighting setup in the studio by feeding the studio lights into the DMX system with a bit of help from our technician demonstrator, who explained the DMX-system to me and rigged the LEDGOs safely. Has and I have positioned the lighting to our best knowledge and ability and experimented a bit with coloured gels, CTO filters (Daylight to Tungsten conversion that Has and I settled on for effect), and scrims to find the best lighting scenarios possible, before we had our technician demonstrator double-check on our work and suggest improvements that would get rid of the last shadows and hot spots that were left.
Since then, and most importantly after the set was finally set up, I sat down over the weekend to create the final lighting plans based on the experimentation Has and I did on the lighting last Thursday. Yesterday, we then went in in order to finalise the setup (add authentic-looking flooring and props to the set) and finally gelled the required lights with the help of Hannah and Chloe. I’ve updated my lighting plans for the last time by adding the DMX channels to the corresponding LEDGOs and printed them out.
After all this was done, we were leisurely looking forward to the film production today, as we’ve come to the point where we prepared as much as possible. The rest of the equipment, namely the camera equipment, we planned to put up early the next morning and scheduled two hours for that. Whilst I did not yet have the chance to make the final check on the film in the magazine – you’d usually phase a bit of the film within the camera to check whether you loaded it correctly – I figured that two hours of setting up camera would easily account for that as well, if need be.
However, as we all prepared for an early night to be in our best shape for our film production, our producer Chloe received an email from our main actor, cancelling on us in the last minute. So whilst everything else was set up, we were now one main actor short and quickly had to find a replacement, of which Chloe and Hannah gratefully took care.
The next morning however, we were still missing a main actor, so our editor Adam kindly offered to act for the role of Mr. Todd, despite the rather ill-fitting, tea-stained costume. However, it made the character look more dishevelled, which actually suited the setting quite fine, regarding the fact that his joint venture with Mrs. Lovett was crashing.
The Commercial Production
We started today at 9:00 taking out equipment from our stores and setting it up in the studio. This was a rather quick endeavour, since Has and I had already mapped out what equipment we wanted to use and where to put it up, so we were mostly set up by 9:45. Since we finalised our lighting setup yesterday, we thus found an abandoned pedestal in the studio and realised that it would not only be strong enough to hold heavy cameras such as the Arri SR3, but that it would also be a neat solution to all the tracking shots and elevating shots that Has had envisioned. Since the pedestal could be easily moved and pivot points could be set, we quickly settled on using it as our main camera support and ditched the tripod as our go-to source.
I moved on to attaching the rails for our focus ring as well as the focus ring adapter to the front of the camera and taped it fast with gaffer tape, since the screw that would connect the rails to the front of the camera was missing. By attaching the focus ring and adapter to the camera, it allowed me to pull focus without having to constantly look up from the viewfinder to find the correct ring. It furthermore helped me avoid to accidentally change the aperture instead of the focus on the lens itself, which was a major aid during filming with an unlasting resource such as 16mm film stock.
I then moved on to our lenses and the lens choices as I’ve noted them down on Has’ storyboard. As – since the installation of the set – the camera had either been constantly taken out or the only battery been charged, I was unable to make finite lens tests within the new set with the lens kit given. Which is why I roughly approximated the lenses and settled on 25mm for wider shots and 50mm for anything that was either a medium close up or a close up.
But when we finally set up today, I realised that the size of our set allowed us much more leeway than I initially thought. As it stood, we were able to get down to 16mm without filming out of set, so I quickly adapted the range and lens choices for the ten different shots that we had and used the 16mm for most of the wide shots, the 25mm for the two shots, mid shots and medium close ups, and only rarely, the 50mm for the product shot and the final shot. And these are the focal lengths we ended up using (added by hand onto Has' storyboard):
So after having set up everything, I decided that I would now make the final test to the film in the magazine to double-check on my loading the camera. Since the camera had been used on Monday and its battery needs approx. 18h for a full charge, I sadly was not able to test it on Tuesday, right after I loaded the film, as the only battery was still down. However, I tested the film by both phasing it and recording a bit and it passed the test just fine. Whenever we filmed, the film buzzed as it is supposed to, which was a major relief for me personally.
After setting up and measuring the light in the studio for the first time with the help of a light meter (Chloe kindly took over that task together with the slate), we set the correct aperture before every shot and started filming as soon as our actors had arrived and changed into costume. Our procedure would thus look like follows:
Announcement of shot no. and content (Has)
Loading the slate (Chloe)
Change of lens if required (Svea)
Explanation of shot with the actors (Has and actors)
Framing of shot according to storyboard (Svea)
Preparation of sound equipment and boom pole (Hannah)
Double-check of Framing and/or amendments (Has and Svea)
Pulling Focus (Svea)
Positioning of mic and boom (Hannah)
Measuring light with new shot (Chloe)
Change of aperture (Svea)
Double-check of focus/possible refocus (Svea)
Positioning of slate in the frame (Chloe)
Run-Through of Set Etiquette (Has)
Actors in Position
Quiet on Set
Sound rolling (Hannah)
Camera rolling (Svea)
Marker (Chloe)
Action!
And cut!
This indeed proved to be a very helpful procedure, as it was not only effective (roughly 125 years of film history did indeed polish procedures to perfection), but also got us into a good and quick workflow that allowed us to film two-thirds of the film even before the lunch-break. It also goes to demonstrate how much time you can actually save when filming in the studio, as the lighting situation only changed with major shot changes or reframings, which was totally different to our shoot on Sunday, where a delay of 10 seconds in the procedure meant that you would have to check on the lighting situation/aperture again, sometimes under really twisted contortions to avoid casting any shadows on the meter itself.
However, all went fine up until the point when we were not delivered some props at the time they had been scheduled to be in. We had already decided to get going without passive props when Chloe received a message that she could now fetch them, which delayed our shoot by roughly 30min. However, since Has and I already blocked and framed the relevant shot with our actors, we were then able to quickly put them up in the relevant places and resume filming.
During our film shoot today, we had to reposition the lighting scenario once for the final shot, which was now a quick and effortless endeavour, now that I knew how to operate the DMX system and how to turn down (or dial up) the intensity of certain lights.
After about four hours of filming, we were able to wrap our film up with all the relevant shots taken. After our crew had returned all of the equipment, I proceeded to unloading both the unused film and the exposed film in the dark room again with the help of our technician demonstrator who assisted in holding down the lid of both cans to avoid accidental exposure as taping shut film cans in the dark (and especially in a black bag) is a feat in and of itself.
However, after unloading both films and marking the film can, our three commercial projects came to an intermediate ending. For now, the exposed film needs to be sent out for processing and telecinening, before our editors can take over the job of editing, colour correcting, and possibly colour grading the digitalised footage.
I’m now really excited to see the result of our filming with 16mm and I will definitely work again with proper film stock in the future, even though it is more expensive. The visual quality of the film stock alone already compensates for the additional work it incurs.