account of shoot day

we arrived on set on friday the 21st of January after having set up a basic outline of the set the night before, we recieved more probs and mockups to make the set more realistic, the set we created was pretty accurate according to the immage of the set we came up with. Once having set up the set we realised that we could not have the correct focus on the objects chosen in accordance to our story board so we had to move parts of the set to get the right focus and later in the day place tracks to move around the set for our tracking shots.

we started with the easier shot which was that of a lightbulb flickering with the brick wall background, for this to work we had to move the suspended lightbulb forwards and place the camera at least a meter away, we then had to place a redhead light aimed at the wall which would turn on at the same time as the lightbulb. the shot consisted of about 1 minute of footage of the light bulb flickering and going out and turning on. this shot worked exactly as our story board had intended exept the light bulb was on the other side of the screen.

the next shot was a five part shot as we had to shoot a minute of the glass with a computer mouse, then a minute of the dead mouse, another minute of the mouse placed differently, the footage of the dead rat and finaly the footage of a drop of oil going down the whine glass. the shot hopefully will come together nicely.

 The third shot is that of an ice cube melting in real time which we will now fast forward and then reverse to make it seem as if a puddle tuned into an ice cube.

 to set up the next shot we had to start weeks in advance geting some fruit and allowing it to rot, then setting it up into two identicle fruit bowls having rotten fruit in one and good fruit in the other, then setting up two tables, one to place the bottle of wine and the next to place the fruit bowl we then set up the tracks and set up the camera on the Spider Dolly, we then had to repeat the shot panning across focus pulling and panning all at the same time, this did not work very well but eventually we managed to get it right. we then changed the good fruit bowl to the bad fruit bowl and repeated the shot.

we also set up a window in the studio and placed a green screen and shot that for about 1 minute which we will then place a city scape into. or something else on the green screen. the lighting was slightly stronger on one side so we had to set up another light on the other side to balance the green.

we then needed another shot which we did by using smashed glass and making it fall in front of the camera which we shot in slow-mo to use possibly as a transition or as a new shot placing titles into it.

the lighting for our set we used a wash to light the whole set, at diferent strengths of light depending on the mood needed and the way in which we shot it. we also used a light bulb that hung from the cealing which we shot flickering to place credits into, and finaly red head lights to light up more specific areas of the set and to light the close ups better, such as the ice cube, the lightbulb and two for the green screen.

pre filming we decided to go with slow clasical music to make it seem calm and slow it down, so not contrasting the footage that we have shot, it was decided that me and Anushka in the group would produce the music.

my role in the shoot day changed from setting up the shots,this involved handling a dead mouse and rat, lighting, setting the lighting, camera man and melting ice using hot water and a pepette over the course of about half an hour. this altered depending on who was doing what.