Poppie Goes Belly Up: Of Crisis Management and Carrying On with Test Shots
At the beginning of the week, all LVL5 productions held a mutual production meeting in order to coordinate crewmembers and equipment and fine-tune our individual schedules. For Poppie, this only meant reconfirming the dates and times that we had previously schedules, which – on Monday morning – were still 18th, 19th, 20th, 30thof March, and 1stas well as 2ndof April.
Schedules and Issues: Sorting Out a Schedule
However, this seemed to change drastically later that day, when Chloe returned with bad news from a meeting with the lecturer for our acting course. As it stood then, we had issues getting the actors for the amount of time that we would need in order to make this project work. Initially, we planned to work with our chosen actors for a total of four days with a twelve-hours workday each. This was now drastically reduced to a total of 2,5 days with only about eight hours, not being able to film properly on Mondays or Tuesdays – the only days which we had our main location available.
Since four days were already a stretch to capturing our story in images, it was quickly obvious that we would not be able to do them. Already last week, both Lynley and I checked whether we would be able to reduce the shots and plot lines of our story in order to accommodate them within the schedule given. However, when we went through it again – contemplating changes and cuts once more – we quickly realised that it could not have been done without crippling the story completely.
Thus, Lynley, Chloe and I once again sat down together and attempted to tweak the schedule. I again used the technique I deployed last week, which can be read in my blog entry Poppie’s Café: Of Props and Shooting Schedules. However, it was then when it really became clear that we’ve been given only one full day and only three half days to complete our project.
A Drastic Solution – Getting Rid of Actors
Which is why I proposed to get rid of the university’s actors. Since anything else would have resulted in a rehaul of the entire schedule and an even higher likelihood of not getting the project done in time (or at all), we collectively decided to swap our two main actors from the acting course to other actors outside the course. Which is what Chloe then took care of. And while she was successful in getting the actor for Benjie already by Tuesday evening, we did not get a single actress to play Poppie by the end of Friday.
On Friday then – three days before the commencement of principal photography – we furthermore learned that we would not have our make up artiste anymore, as she told us that she was going on vacation – despite being informed of the relevant dates already two weeks prior. With this crushing news, and no actress for Poppie in sight, Chloe thus decided that she would act the role of Poppie if nobody was to be found soon.
Carrying On – Cinematographer’s Style
Since I could do nothing concerning these aspects of pre-production, I decided to carry on with the parts of pre-production that I could actually influence on Wednesday and Thursday, which was:
Taking additional test footage for Poppie (which I will discuss further down)
Conducting lighting tests with colour gels (which I will discuss in another blog entry)
Devising and refining lighting plans (which I will discuss in another blog entry)
Taking Additional Test Footage
On Wednesday and Thursday, I met with Lynley to conduct some more test shots for our project, both as a practice for myself on camera as well as for Nathan as an editor later on. Thus – and due to the busy studio schedule – I met with Lynley and Katie in the old film studio on Wednesday. Goal of that session was to practice one of the more difficult shots of our production, which was the shape-shifting shot.
Although we already practised the ‘On-Screen Morph Shot’ last week – which would rely heavily on editing processes – this time we wanted to see whether we could also pull off a shape-shifting shot with two different characters by having something (or someone) pass in the foreground of the frame and using this incision to hide a cut in there – or, alternatively, hide the second actor if this is done in one shot exclusively. I’ve already blogged about this ‘Foreground Frontal’in my blog entry Filming a Shape-Shifter.
Shape-Shifting With Foreground Objects
In order to make these shots marry up and work later in post, the most important parts to get right are not only the angle and perspective of the shots itself, but also the speed of them in case you would want to make a moving shot out of it – which we full on intended to do.
This time, and because we could not get a hold of the track and dolly due to it being booked out by LVL4 productions, we retreated to setting the shot with the help of two tripods and a slider. Since the slider is rather short with just a meter in length, I thus decided to move the entire setup a bit further away from our stand-in-director Lynley to get more distance in and thus space in the frame.
We then put Katie as our ‘foreground object’ – which would later be replaced by Poppie in our film – in front of the slider (and camera) to give us someone to pass by to practise the shot. I initially put her in the middle of the slider as I thought this would give us plenty of screen space and screen time before and after passing her to make the shot come together.
To ensure a similar speed in two separate shots, I drew on the knowledge I previously took from the video ’Tutorial on Cinematography - 5 more Special Effects That Anyone Can Do For Free’ as presented by the Youtube Channel Kinetek:
However, instead of using the track and dolly – which would be too heavy to be put on a slant AND stay secured with a camera on top – we obviously went for the slider, which I would use by putting it on a slight angle.
This I did by slightly raising one tripod higher than the other. In our case, this turned out to be the slider on screen left, since this is the side our shot will start with. With this setup, and once I unlocked the slider head, the camera would now always move with the same velocity. Hooray and thanks to the laws of gravity!
My Learning, Pt. 1
However, even if this setup solved a lot of issues for us – amongst them especially the one in which we would have to fork out money for a programmable electric Edelkrone-slider – this setup also meant that someone was always to stand by with the camera and hold or watch it, as this slant – in combination with an unsecured slider head – could easily topple over with a camera on top.
As we started and continued practising that shot a couple of times, I learned a couple of very useful tricks for that very shot:
Firstly, the best results regarding framing and symmetry within the image were achieved when setting up the slider in front of the actor, but about 2,5 to 3 meters away (with a 24mm lens).
Secondly, although I initially placed Katie at the middle of the slider, thinking that she would also symmetrically cut the image both in the beginning and the end, it turned out that having her stand at the first quarter of the entire slider length gave us more exposure of the frame later on. Thus, we would be able to better show the actual result of the shape-shift in an adequate amount of time, whilst simultaneously cutting down on the beginning of the shot, which turned out to be a bit too long.
Thirdly, in regard to spatial relations, we furthermore realised that this would work well if both actors stood about a yard apart from each other. This setup could then either work for two different shots (with their respective actors each) or for a single shot with both characters in, since the person standing in front of the camera (in this case, Katie) would always block out one of them, depending on the camera position. In the end, both characters would end up at the ‘right’ position within the frame, at least in the cinematic world.
You can see an example shot of this here:
PLACEHOLDER – PLEASE BEAR WITH ME UNTIL AFTER EDITING
Action Shots
We then went onto practising the ‘action shot’ again. This is the shot in which Benjie is knocked out with a cane swung by Agnes from behind. Although our first attempt was not that bad to begin with – it all comes down to the timing of the actors – I felt the need to practise it a bit more for my personal gain:
My Learning, Pt. 2
Within this exercise, I then realised that my abilities to frame this rather tight shot had gotten more efficient and quicker. Whilst it took me a long time first time around – especially due to the difference in character heights – this time I was set up almost immediately.
Last week, when we first practised this shot, I could only ever manage to frame the shot right if both characters were about the same height. This was due to the fact that I was using a rather long lens with a focal length about 100mm (if you want to know my reason behind taking a long lens for this shot, you can read all about it in my blog entry ‘Beat‘Em Up! How to Film A Punch’).
However, this time I was able to frame this setup with a tall person in the foreground and a smaller person in the background of the shot. The solution to this? I brought more space between the actors and my camera in order to help me frame it. Whilst I was approx. two meters away in last week’s shot, I now was about 3,5 to four meters away, which gave me a lot more leeway to work with framing-wise.
Furthermore, this time I settled on putting the camera on eye-level with the actor in the foreground, with only a slight downward angle to better incorporate the actor in the background.
You can see an example shot of this here:
PLACEHOLDER – PLEASE BEAR WITH ME UNTIL AFTER EDITING
A Tracking Shot - My Learning, Pt. 3
On Thursday then, with the access to our film studio and the track and dolly, Lynley, Adam, and I practised a tracking shot. Since this shot will be used for the entrance scene of our male lead into the café, we wanted to map it out beforehand. With this shot, we would not only follow our main lead into the café for the first time, we would furthermore follow his gaze – once to the left and once to the right – showing the strange customers sitting left and right of him, before centring on what’s in front of him – which will be the café’s owner Poppie.
Thus, we set out the track in a straight line, with three track elements in length, as this is the approx. length that we would use within the café, and after marking down key points for me, I started practising the shot – attempting to pull focus, and get the pans and timings right.
And while the first couple of attempts seemed rather clumsy, and the pace we aimed for rather quick, we quickly adapted to it and made the shot fit within that timeframe. However, due to the extremely crowded space in the studio (a train set, a piano, a TV, and a genie made it impossible to not constantly run into stuff while pulling focus and pushing the dolly), we were not really able to pull the follow focus off perfectly, as I would always bump into heavy objects. This is one of the attempts we made during practice:
However, in regard to our time aka length of rails, we managed to fit the entire action in. Whilst a length of four straight rails would however definitely be more beneficial to us, we will have to see whether we would be able to fit it all in on location.
References:
KINETEK (2016) Tutorial on Cinematography – 5 more Special Effects That Anyone Can Do For Free [online] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4vtLa5Seew [Accessed on 1 March 2019]
Kenworthy, C. (2009) 100 Advanced Camera Techniques to Get an Expensive Look on Your Low Budget Movie Studio City: Michael Wiese Productions