Continuing Pre-Production Part 1

During the holidays I continued with my weekly plan which was to review the majority of my research and start finalising my locations/ actors. I had some difficulties in finding suitable locations, the main location that I believe is of key importance with creating the atmosphere and making the scene plausible was the basement. I viewed a couple of locations which belonged to a friend and family but each where unusable considering the size of the room and being 47-  aware of  health and safety, by this I mean it was too wet to work in and may be damageable to the equipment.  Luckily I have a basement which at first wouldn’t be acceptable but once I cleared some areas out and envisioned how the piece would play out I realised that it was the most feasible location for me. With this location I have full access to practice with lighting and positioning.

 

 

  

As I mentioned on a previous post, I had been talking to Emily McGregor & Becky Gill about working on this piece with me, unfortunately they informed me that they wouldn’t be able to participate now as they have a large amount of work to finish soon and they didn’t feel they could give their full dedication, this was unfortunate as I enjoy working with both of them and respect their work ethic. They did to go on to assure me that if I was to continue this project they would be involved as a full time crew member.

Worried about recruiting a cast I put up a post on the “Star Now” website, I wanted to come off as professional as possible. I decided to not view the site for some time as I would constantly be agitated if someone had or hadn’t responded. Hopefully my ad will attract some responses.

Seeing as Becky and Emily had left the production, the crew consisted of Jordan Gott and I. This wasn’t a major issue but I would like to have more people involved as it allows a range of creative feedback in all aspects. After discussion with Jordan we decided to ask Lewis Johnson to join our crew, he is a good friend and is determined to gain more experience in all areas. 

As being  part of the group we began working straight away, I asked Lewis to come round to my home and help me by being a “stand in” as I work on camera positioning and difficulties I have to be aware of before the actually shoot. However we had a late start so I wanted just do work on a specific camera transition and practicing the first basement scene. I had an idea for a shot which is considered really difficult so we first worked on that, the shot consists of two locations and a lot of patience. The shot would be of slowly zooming into the characters eyes then slowly zooming out of the same eyes but in a different location, with this you need the have the exact amount of distance between the actor and camera, also lighting is a major factor to make this work but at this moment in time I just wanted to work on the shot. We spent some time working on this but realised that it was really difficult as I couldn’t get in close enough to the single eye without causing it to blur. I tried from different distances and positions, then we tried moving the camera itself closer to the eye but nothing helped. I intend to have a workshop with a member of the media department; hopefully they’ll show me how to make this shot work. Before moving on Lewis suggested perhaps instead of focusing on the one eye, I should try getting close enough to only show both the eyes. Having a little practice with that, I realised that may be the safer option at the moment.

Next we went to work on the basement scene, as I mentioned we were short on time so we only worked on the first basement scene. I was especially worried working on this scene as this is where most of the characters interaction is viewed and is the main attraction of the drama. I was a bit worried on not covering all areas of the basements scenes but whilst practising I realised that most of the shots in this scene will be the same as the rest of the scenes, with only a couple of additional camera shots. I used Lewis Johnson to play the character Tom and my little brother Lewis to play Luke.