Poppie’s First Week of Production: Issues and Lessons Learned with Actors, Location, Equipment, and
Yes, you read the title correctly. It was an intense first week of principal photography for Poppie’s Café for Monsters, with issues in all areas, but especially with actors, location, equipment, and time.
But let me start at the beginning and walk you through it all.
Monday: 18 March 2019, Juniper Lounge
Setup
Our first day started on time. We met at 9.00 in front of the stores to collect equipment, which took up until 9.30 as some of the equipment we required was still out on loan and returned at about 9.15 by the previous groups. We then had the entire equipment on location at 10.00, and I set everything up for the first shot, which was supposed to be the opening tracking shot into the café. At 11.00, as according to schedule, we were ready to go.
Actors
Sadly, it was not long after that that our main actor for Benjie dropped out for the rest of the day due to his car breaking down on the way to our location. He still tried to come in, but it was futile. However, he informed Chloe of the situation and that he would come in tomorrow, who in turn informed us about the situation.
With this information, Lynley and I created a new plan for the day. As we only had Chloe available for our main character Poppie, and only two extras turning up that day, we chose to only do the shots in which they were to be seen. However, since Benjie was scheduled in many shots (we had a lot of dialogue scenes planned that day), we were only able to cover 10 of the shots that we had scheduled for the day, which was a very disappointing outcome to look at.
Time Management and Cutaways
However, in order to utilise the time at hand to the best of my abilities, I took the time to capture as many cutaways as I possibly could to make up for the time-loss. So whenever we had a brief moment of downtime, I would look around and record cutaway footage that seemed befitting of the mood and design we were going for.
But still, after all the shots were done and I had taken my cutaway shots, it was still only 4 p.m. Which meant that we incurred a loss of roundabout five hours as we were scheduled to film that day from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Too Many Beer Taps
Another, rather unexpected, but totally preventable issue that I had to deal with, was the number of beer taps that had been installed at the counter of the Juniper Lounge as well as the location of the register. Although we did a location recce not too long ago, I sadly didn’t pick up on them becoming a possible issue for our shoot. However, since the counter has six different beer taps installed, which littered most of the shots, it significantly impeded my choices of framing, restricting us to very few workable and visually interesting (or well developed) shots.
Copyright and Trademark
Another issue that I picked up on in regard to the beer tabs was the fact that they were visibly branded. Which not only resulted in involuntary product placement and questions of copyright/trademarks, but furthermore also questioned the whole purpose of the place being a bar.
Thus, I talked to Chloe and Lynley about the issue. Chloe mentioned that we would not run into any problems regarding the trademark as we would and did not display the relevant product in a bad light. Furthermore, she added, she would be able to blur the logos and brands in post if I should not be able to do it in camera. Lynley added that she would not mind renaming her café (or the entire project for that matter) to Poppie’s Lounge for Monsters if all else failed – which I found to be a nice homage to the Juniper Lounge which led us film in there.
Light Control and Measures Taken
Moving on to lighting, there were many issues to be dealt with. Firstly, with the big windows and glass doors along two walls of the café, there was a lot of daylight falling into the lounge. Whilst it added to the charm of the place, over the course of the day it also turned out to have it downsides to it, as it sometimes became difficult to control the ‘slightly’ different lighting during the day.
Thus, in order to adjust the lighting and keeping them somewhat balanced over the course of one day, I made it a habit to check back on the footage that I had previously taken and compared the colour temperature as well as the quality of light. This, admittedly rough, guideline however helped me keep the lighting somewhat within the same range.
However, this also took a bit of time, especially around noon and around sunset, where – quite naturally – the colour temperature and light intensity changes the most. Thus, in order to adjust the lighting, I tried different methods and – around noon and sunset – permutations of the following:
Adjusting the Blackmagic’s shutter angle
Halving the stops of the lens’ aperture
Using a ND-filter
Adjusting whitebalance
Adjusting the Blackmagic’s ISO
Adjusting the Blackmagic’s Shutter Angle
Adjusting the shutter angle hitherto proved to be the most effective measure to balance the –sometimes subtle – light changes between shots as it would allow me to go in very small increments.
Halving the Stops of the Lens’ Aperture
This trick, which I picked up from the cinematographer of Girl Fight, the short film on which I helped as a 2ndAC back in January, was another very helpful measure to make the shots work, as I would sometimes find that the change of an entire stop in the aperture was still too drastic of a change in either darkening or brightening the image. However, in combination with the adjustment of the shutter angle, I was able to work with a halved stop of 5.6 and 8 to make the shots work AND keep the depth of field similar for most shots.
Using a ND-Filter
Using the inbuilt ND-filter in our case was only helpful when the sunlight coming in from outside was massively overexposing everything within the image, which only ever happened once. Since the inbuilt ND-filters with the Blackmagic Ursa only come in double stops – 2, 4, and 6 stops – their effect was quite extreme. I ended up only using them in case the slate was completely overexposed by the incoming light and couldn’t be read, as the effect helped make the text legible again.
Adjusting White-Balance
This cheeky little trick helped most around sunset, when the colour temperature changed too much from daylight to tungsten. By gradually adjusting the white-balance until I centred on 4400K as the lowest value I would go, almost half the way between daylight (5500K) and tungsten (3200K), I was able to balance the colour temperature and make them somewhat match to the previous shots.
By gradually lowering the white-balance towards tungsten, the increasingly red sunlight falling through the window would still be interpreted as white light by the camera, keeping the illusion upright that the shots taken were still taken during the day and not during the golden hour. However, this measure also meant that I would have to check and adjust the white-balance extremely regularly, as the colour temperature would change quickly during sunset.
Adjusting the Blackmagic’s ISO
This was the least effective and promising measure and I did not end up using it for our project. As the Blackmagic Ursa’s native – and thus best ISO – lies at about only 800, it initially seemed worth the try during setup. And while I encountered situations in which the image was rather dark and underexposed to begin with, doubling the camera sensor’s light sensitivity to an ISO of 1600 resulted in visual noise within the darker areas of the image that was already very visible on the camera’s LCD display, so I did not bother with it from then on.
Tuesday: 19 March 2019, Juniper Lounge
Tuesday met us with another blast that put us under even more of a time crunch than we already had.
Location Availability and Impromptu Refurbishment
First of all, early in the morning, our location manager had informed us that the location would not be available before 12 p.m. at the earliest, since a carpenter and a painter were scheduled to come in and do repairs and paint the walls for half a day.
Ensuing Continuity Errors
This not only drastically reduced our filming hours from twelve hours (9 a.m. to 9 p.m.) to nine hours, but also had an impact on the continuity of the footage shot the day before, as parts of the wall – which had served as a backdrop for some of our shots – had been painted from white to salmon. In order to make the shots of our previous day work, I spent some time lighting the background in a different colour to make the difference in continuity less visible.
More Actors Dropping Out
Second to this came the news that our main actor for the role of Benjie had dropped out of our project entirely due to his car breaking down completely. This not only meant that we had to cast our second editor Nathan as main actor, it also put even more time pressure on us as Nathan had to quickly learn his lines, which naturally took some time.
Furthermore, since we all were already on set when the bad news hit – and Nathan had travelled in by train – he would have to leave with the last train, which left at 19.30. This, in turn, meant that our shooting schedule had been crunched even more, down to about 6,5h. On the other hand, however, this turned out to not being half as bad as creating the proper lighting became increasingly difficult the later it got.
Reframing Shots on the Go
As all this was extremely affecting our shooting schedule for the day, and turned out to be even more compromising regarding the intended outcome of our production, Lynley and I sat down and started killing the shots that we had taken such a long time planning for, dumbing down the amount of shots and angles that we wanted to cover.
As we furthermore had the issue of the beer taps at the counter to deal with, we also decided to relocate some of the shots to the centre of the café, which required us to think quickly about the setup and its further implications on all the ensuing scenes, which in turn took a massive toll on our setup times.
With us drastically removing most of the shots in our storyboard due to all the issues listed above, I felt that I wasn’t able to show what I would have been able to get. With all the issues at hand, we sometimes only had time for two or three takes before we had to move on to gather coverage.
Equipment Crunch
And if that had not yet put everyone under pressure during the course of the day, halfway through our 6,5h shoot we received a call from our technical demonstrator, informing us that a double-booking of equipment had taken place and that we would have to return half our lighting equipment as well as the track and dolly back to the stores on Wednesday morning for another crew to collect. Equipment, which was incremental for the basement scene; the scene that required all the light that I could possibly get.
Enter My Nemesis: Background Overexposure
Another unexpected, but major issue I had regarding the amount of windows and light coming in, were the framing of the shots that would show said windows in the background. This turned out to be major hassle for me as it rendered the background either distracting (with all the passers-by looking into the lounge and cars driving by, distracting from the scene) or completely overexposed (if wanted them blocked out). Even a shallow depth of field did not really help the issue as the windows still dominated the image in size – with every outside movement distracting from the scene.
Attempts at Problem-Solving
Since I could not leave the background as it was, I firstly attempted to solve the issue with the overexposure by increasing the light levels of the action happening in the foreground with the equipment I had at hand. However, even with all the Felloni2 lights set at 100% and using all the plugs available in proximity (AND within the health and safety regulations), I was not able to balance the extreme difference between the foreground and the background.
Furthermore, within the small space that was available – and even after cheating with Nathan’s position in the room – I would only be able to create hot-spots in his face, even with the lights indirectly bounced off the walls behind us. A light-balanced image was not possible under these circumstances.
This issue was further impeded by the fact that we did not – and that would have been another solution to our issue – have enough equipment ready at hand to block a good portion of the light coming through the windows.
Since equipment was a massive problem to take care of with 13 productions going on simultaneously at university, we sadly were not left with enough options to either block out light or add even more to the scene. The lighting equipment, as displayed on my lighting plans, is literally all that we could get. Furthermore, with the skint budget we had at hand, the purchase and application of black curtains to block at least some light coming from the windows was also out of our game plan.
Lastly, I attempted to block out the background by using a shallow depth of field. However, this proved to be much more of a problem, since the space on that particular part of the location was so narrow that I was not able to use a long lens (either 85mm or 100mm) without cutting our actor’s chin AND forehead off.
With all the attempts made, I then decided to talk to our editors about the issue. However, our editor Chloe seemed positive that they were able to mask it, so I left it overexposed to give them as clear a slate as possible to mask it in post.
Actors Dropping Left and Right
At about 10 p.m. that day, and after our shoot, we then learned that our main actress for Agnes had made other arrangements and cancelled on us, only offering us 1,5h to film with her at most. Whilst this was crushing news, Katie jokingly talked about the benefit of the evil twin sister trope – having one actress play both roles. This I considered as the only viable solution at this point, and suggested it to the group on behalf of Katie. Everyone agreed for the sake of our production.
Wednesday: 20 March 2019, Basement
As it turned out, the next day was not particularly better than the previous two days. While we initially learned that we would be able to keep the track and dolly AND the lighting equipment, we incurred another delay in time as the required props for the set dresser did not arrive on time due to transportation and parking issues.
The Schedule That Became a Singularity
And whilst we would have loved for our set dresser to be able to dress the basement for our scene the day before our shoot, we did not gain access to the location, which meant that it needed to be done in the first two hours of our shooting day.
This, in turn, delayed the finalisation of my lighting in a first step. Although I already prelit the scene before our set-dresser was able to decorate the set, it still took time to adjust the lighting once everything was set up, as I was then able to really see where objects had been overexposed by my lighting.
In a second step, my progress on lighting the basement was furthermore massively impeded by the fact that we lost the power plug in the basement – a power plug, which I had tested just 1,5 weeks prior to filming and which worked perfectly fine back then. Now that it was out of function, it took me another 10-15 min to find the appropriate extension cable of 30m length and to feed the power from one of the offices upstairs all the way down into the basement.
Using an Arri 800W tungsten light, a Mini Mist hazer with 700W and a Felloni2 light with approx. 24W, I remained well within the limits of the 2KW that the power circuit would provide. However, with all the additional lighting required that could not be put onto the circuit either due to their high wattage or due to the shortness of their cables (these lights would then have stood in the middle of the room and thus appeared in shot), we ran through the six V-locks quicker than we could charge them.
This was due to the fact that the only charger available for us would only charge the V-locks sequentially, one at a time and each for up to six hours depending on their age, whereas a full charge could – depending on the lights, their intensity and colour temperature – only last for about two hours if lucky.
With these issues at hand, and for the third day in a row, we again ended up in a massive time crunch. This time pressure now required us to completely deviate from the storyboard and to get the basic, minimum coverage of the action done. At the end of the day, I was extremely dissatisfied and disappointed with the outcome as most shots are rushed and thus not up to my personal standard either in regard to lighting or focus.
Further Bits of Learning
As this was a very long chain of bad news and disaster, and for reasons of brevity, I have herewith condensed some additional bits and pieces of my learning to the following key points:
Actors
Getting actors for a student film production that cannot pay more than travel expenses is really tough. Getting reliable actors that do appear on set on time and prioritise their work over other appointments is even more difficult.
Location
Whilst the power outage of the plug in the basement was a freak accident, it served as a good lesson to always have a testing device with me for future location recces to ensure that the plugs provided also do run power.
However, more important for any location recce in the future will be looking out for visual obstacles, copyright and trademark issues as well as anything else that could possibly inhibit the framing of my shots, such as e.g. windows, which brings me to my next point.
Lighting
I will have to research measures to correct overexposure and lighting issues in the background of an image, such as explained above. Whilst the standard recommendation was to block the light either by an ND-filter or by a black curtain, none of these measures was applicable at this point in time.
Planning and Time
In hindsight I learned that we had too many shots scheduled to begin with for the fact that we are still a rather inexperienced student film crew. Whilst both Lynley and I wanted to make the imagery visually pleasing and take a step up regarding coverage and cut-aways, we did bite off more than we could chew, especially in regard to all the issues being thrown at us and the massive time loss that we incurred, which further overcomplicated our schedule.
Furthermore, I realised that I will have to watch the footage back in order to know which shots to redo and which to pick up, since we deviated so much from our storyboard that I lost overview over our actual coverage.
Personal
Last but not least, I unexpectedly learned that I am much more resilient than I thought I would be. Despite all the issues thrown at us, and the massive time crunch that we repeatedly experienced, as well as the motivational crush and my cold (with occasional fever) that I carried around on set, I was still able to adapt and implement the shots to the best of my abilities and to find solutions to most of the issues – barring the overexposed background, my arch nemesis.
Let’s see how the second and third week of principal photography will progress.