This is what I learned from spending four days shooting a short film.
"Scene 1, slate 1, take one"
When we arrived on location, I already had
a pretty good idea of the shots we needed, so the first thing we did on set was to walk
through the scene with Wayne and JP so they knew the plan for the day.
But of course any time you collaborate, the questions that people ask and the ideas that
they bring usually have a huge impact on the final product.
Whether it was suggesting some extra shots that we should get, or Wayne’s thoughts
on safety for stunts, or JP letting me know when I was breaking the 180.
Once we had run through all of the shots, JP would set up the camera for the first one,
often having someone stand in for the actors so we could frame up.
At this point we’d often walk through the blocking with the actors, who often have questions
and ideas about how they should move. For example in this scene my idea was that
Mark would be held by his arms, but someone suggested that he could get spun around and
pushed against the wall, which actually looked a lot more natural, not to mention that I
think the spin around is a clearer way to visually show the power dynamics between them.
For the biggest stunt, which involved falling off a bike onto a crash mat, I demonstrated
it first, to show the actors and everyone that I did believe it was a safe thing to
ask someone to do. And as with all of the more complex shots,
we ran through it at half speed first to make sure everyone was comfortable before rolling
any cameras.
As soon as we had a rough idea of how the scene would play out with the actors, JP would
start setting up lights if we needed them. We’d brought some water in a camping tank,
so that we could wet the road to make nice reflections of the light.
But that was more about the aesthetics of a night scene, and cinematography isn’t
just about tone, it’s also drawing attention to important things.
We had this shot where Connor brings out a knife, and I was a bit concerned that with
it being a dark scene and there being a lot of movement in the background, that the audience
would miss this key part of the plot. We could have just cut in to close up of the
knife, but somehow that just felt too lazy. Instead JP found the exact position of where
the knife would reflect light, and placed an LED panel dimmed all the way to the lowest
setting. Here’s the final shot, and I think it’s
pretty hard to miss the knife.
So we were finished lighting, the sound guys would usually be ready and waiting, so we
were ready to go for the first take. "Camera's rolling"
"sound speed" "okay, settle settle settle"
"mark it" "scene 5, slate 2, take 1"
"thank you board" "and... action"
Now I personally like to just step back and see what the actors come up with for that
first take, because they will have thought about the character and you know, interpreted
the script in their way, so I don’t want to miss the opportunity for a better interpretation
of the script than my interpretation, just because I was saying, no from the very beginning
you've got to do it my way. After the first take, that’s a great time
to have a chat with the actors. For example, to begin with, Oli was playing
this scene with a lot of intensity, so my notes were that if that was a 10 on the anger
and intensity scale, and zero was just being completely monotone, let's see what a four
looks like. Now I don’t know if that’s the best way
to talk to an actor, but in that situation I think it worked out pretty well.
Now I used a more conventional approach for the fifth scene, when Lewis was playing the
dealer fairly aggressively, and I wanted to send him more towards towards caution.
Rather than just asking Lewis to be less aggressive, instead I gave him some backstory.
This character had seen first hand what guns are capable of, and also what murder does
to the person who was using the gun, that’s what I felt was loaded behind this line of
“don’t use it, don’t even bother loading it”.
So with that in mind, he could then extend that and interpret it into his overall performance.
But I do have to be honest here and say that quite often I was pretty happy with what the
actors came up with naturally, without me saying anything about the performance.
Now that could mean that the actors were just naturally in sync with my interpretation of
the characters, nailing it first time, which does happen.
But I am also aware that I need to learn to be more picky about acting, I’m still trying
to fine tune my ideas for what makes a good performance.
Another thing that can need tweaking is the blocking and positioning of everything - often
setting more marks on the ground, so people know where to go.
But sometimes bigger changes need to be made - in the early takes of this scene, we had
this kind of awkward moment of moving past the customers.
Later we changed it so they would exit frame, that opposite motion feeling more natural
as well as wiping the frame much faster. Another time it was simply asking the guys
to spin slightly towards the camera so we could pick up their faces better.
And the same ideas apply to timings - for complex shots you often need cues - “start
walking when you hear this line of dialogue”, or even a countdown as we did after having
some trouble with gunshot timings.
Now aside from making changes and giving feedback, sometimes you just need to go for more takes,
particularly if there's complicated movement.
Now, in the weeks leading up to the shoot, we had so many surprises and problems to deal
with, but on set actually the biggest issues we had were waiting for cars..
Waiting for quiet...
Or general obstructions...
That was literally the worst of it: the weather was basically perfect, all the cast and crew
turned up, and we didn’t get kicked out of any locations.
It’s pretty rare for a shoot to go so smoothly. But even so, this project overall involved a huge,
huge amount of doubting myself, getting stressed out, and genuinely just being unsatisfied
with my ideas. I wouldn’t call the overall experience ‘fun’.
However, on that set (and there’s no way I can say this without sounding super sentimental,
so I'm just gonna go with it) On that set I felt like I was in my element,
I felt like this is what I’m supposed to be doing, and in a deeper way than pretty
much anything I’ve felt before. In amongst all of the pressure and all of the panic, there
were a few fleeting moments of what I can only describe as purpose.
And I think that goes deeper than whether I happen to be enjoying myself at the time,
or even if I'm satisfied with the end result. My name's Simon Cade, this has been DSLRguide,
and I'll see you next week.