Over the course of the semester, I haven’t really used many of the lights available when working on a project. Instead I have often relied on using natural or practical lights. My original and sole project for the end of the semester was to further the ideas I developed in the ‘Test’ shoot. This, essentially, was to follow Kerry, Adelle and Andrew wandering around the space and entering different levels and shades of light, while also using the camera to experiment with angles and movement. I thought of it as a pure cinema type of thing, where the emphasis is on motion. As I have mentioned in a previous post, the test shoot was a one-of-a-kind type of thing, not in terms of quality (as even I’m a bit unsure of how ‘good’ it is), but rather that it relied on a kind of freedom from distraction from the actors that would be hard to replicate on second attempt. We had the space for 3 days (Wednesday to Friday), and I became anxious as I wanted to do something else but couldn’t really let an idea sit with me as I was too impatient. On the Thursday, after watching Adelle’s and Kerry’s shoots, I thought of an idea which I followed through with.

The house, which my family and I have just moved from, still has remnants of the past; things we are yet to decide on worth keeping or disposing. This, along with the vast, empty space available in the living room, gave me a foundation for a shot that is essentially watching two people packing and/or deciding on what to keep or not. It’s a static shot, but I wanted movement and directed Andrew to walk across the space, into the kitchen, where he could pick up some bananas and ask Adelle if she wanted any. Needless to say, the shot is not about the content; again, it’s about movement (camera and person).

I don’t really like digital cameras as I don’t like how they look; the EX3 is okay but I usually opt for black and white as it looks a lot nicer. Though, as I wanted to treat this as doing something I haven’t really done before, I shot it in colour. I still don’t really know what I’m doing when grading, but I like how it has a grainy quality to it. This is something I need to pay more attention to and experiment with.

When shooting, the most pressing question was of course how to light it. This was somewhat difficult and required some time for experimentation. We put a 1K with blue gel outside, which hit through the blinds on the lefthand side onto Andrew, giving him a nice key/fill contrast on his face. We had some trouble with shadows on the back wall being too defined, though this was fixed by toying with the blinds inside the kitchen, and also by using a Dedo light which was situated behind the camera and directed upwards onto the roof. We ran the shot through a few times, though when Andrew entered his position in the kitchen, something felt a bit off. The lighting was too flat, dark, and ultimately a distraction. We put another 1K (which is on Andrew’s rightside in his final position) in the kitchen, and while the lighting on Andrew’s face was still a bit flat, I think it worked because he was backlit along with the space.

I had some audio trouble – the sound was all panned to the left so I had to add a few layers of atmosphere to fix it. It’s still a problem and I wish we got it right, though I feel you could watch it on mute and it would still be engaging (if that’s any consolation).