Shoot Days 5 & 6

We shoot again Monday and Tuesday at the mansion. Monday shoot was focused on the mirror room shots and dining room. We did our standard dining room lighting set up, but added two more and put them all on a power strip to do lightening effect. I acted as a stand in for Rosemary, but luckly it was a shallow depth of field so you can't see detail on Rosemary. The mirror room scene was challenging to avoid misc crew and items from being in shots. But through careful placement we were able to manage. I used a flourescent light for blue ambience in the room, and bounced v lights of the doors in the bathroom to light the entrances/exits out of the rooms. I also took some set photography. Luckily the shoot ended at a decent time of 2am.

For Tuesday, we did the Foyer scenes. The shoot started off slow due to special effects makeup, for the takes were going to be 1 takes and we had to be careful. Luckily it all went well and we got all the shots we needed. I helped the make up artist mix blood mixes and tested it out. Nesh started setting up lights and after make up was made I finished up the light set up and moved lights accordingly to shots. We used a V light in the bathroom bouncing off the wall, a cold light on the ground bouncing off the wall. A rifa light as a key light, another v light bouncing off the ceiling, and a 200 watt incandescent light with a cookie on the stairs. I spent most of the shoot holding the cookie and incandescent light since we had to light it from the stairs, no tripod could hold them. Unfortunately lights were being moved without me 70% of the time. Through out the production I started to feel very useless since my purpose was to light and it was being done with out me. After communicating with the D.P. again that he should be concerned with the camera and me with the lights, communication didn't get through. I know from previous shoots I've been on working as gaffer/chief lighting tech, the D.P. was always great about communicating what his lighting plan was for the shot and going over logistics with me, and this was lacking on the shoot. I was very disappointed and frustrated and felt the final product wasn't as good as it could of been. The shoot ended around 5am, which could of ended sooner.

Shoots Day 1, 2, 3, & 4

We have been shooting pretty much non stop this past week and next week. Tuesday, our first day of shooting  was with Rosemary talking on the phone and being killed. It started off being a little slow since we had really difficult shot to achieve from first person perspective on the camera sneaking up on Rosemary while deciding what weapons to use. Lighting was a bit of a challenge since were limited on extension cords and it we had to light both scenes. But we managed with some well placed reflectors and flags to light it well.

Wednesday shoot went along much faster, but was our longest shoot so far since it had the most shots. We got in the hang of things so things ran much smoothly. We had a bit of a challenge with the 360 shot on the dolly, but managed to hide lights behind props to make up for it. I did flagging and diffusing of lights, and worked with Ganesh on lighting of scenes. I found it slightly frustrating on the lighting process because Ganesh constantly kept moving lights himself and didn't direct me. I asked him not to touch the lights and stay by camera so he can direct me on the look but he didn't listen. I figured he was stressing out with Tim there, but I felt like the process took alot longer because he kept running back and forth to check the camera. So I ended up doing set photography so I could be of some use to the shoot. We had Tim out before midnight since shooting started at 9:30. We were finished with shooting around 5:30am.

Thursday shoot went alot quicker, we were able to get out at 2 am. Everyone is more comfortable with the process, so setting up and take down went alot faster. We did set 2 of dining room shots with the all the actors. Lighting was alot easier being in one room, just had to adjust lights when changing sides. The shots order was organized by sides of room for lighting adjustment, so it made the production go alot faster. I flagged/diffused lights when needed when we didn't have enough light tripods, and I also did clapper for takes. Ganesh also started moving lights himself when I told him I can take care of it, as a result he ended up tiring himself out faster. We also had issues with the pico dolly going out of commission. So we had to use the regular dolly to get straight shots which was challenging to get the tracks straight. So I hid under the table and held the track straight to solve that problem. Another challenge for the shoot was to keep focus since everyone was really tired from the previous days of shoots and work/school, so we had a break Friday for the group to get well rested.

Saturday was only a 1 shot day. We went on location to a circular fence where I keep my horse.  I was able to get permission from the landowner Friday, and we set up to go there at 3 after Big Event was over with. We had issues with it being a very sunny day, so shadows were really harsh on the faces and it was hard to diffuse since the sun was still very high up. The diffusion material we had only diffused a small space, and we needed the space bigger for the shot. But fortunately for this shot it was suppose to look like 1920's footage, where it was suppose to be high contrast. So we were able to overcome that challenge. Since I didn't have lights to deal with, I did set photography again and the clapper for shot reference.

Sunday was another shoot day, but I had to miss due to being sick. I was able to make it Monday. 

Storyboard & Make Up FX

On Friday, March 9 I helped with the storyboard with Ganesh and Jared. The process is very time consuming. Each shot was drawn out and detailed with angles, lenses and camera movement. The process took 2 days overall, I was only able to help on the last day. On Friday we worked on it from 10am til 9pm when we finished the storyboard. Despite the tediousness of it, I know it will help production run alot smoother since we have an idea what the final product will look like. I know with the camera movement preplanned out, it will help me do lighting set up according to the shot. I know once the shots were listed it made it alot easier to organize a shooting schedule which helps alot on the pre viz.

Since I was out of country, I wasn't able to look at the schedule until Monday night (19th). After going through it, its helping me visualize what equipment we need and how the lights will be set up in the mansion to the shots which should help speed things along. I am meeting up with Ganesh Tuesday morning to book all equipment needed for the whole shoot for the next 2 weeks.

Meanwhile, I've been the liaison between the make up artist and the production. I've worked with her on several creative projects, and know she is very capable of doing what we need for this production. I've been in contact with her by sending the FX list Jared made, and updating her on schedule with the production as well as her schedule to us. She has also gathered a supply list needed for make up FX which was generally accounted for in the budget, but she was able to itemize it specifically. Fortunately make up that we need for FX can be made mostly of household items, so the cost fits right into our budget.

Since I wasn't able to do much over the break due to lack of internet access, it was very challenging to remain in touch with the production. With the few times I was able to log on I got brief updates, and were able to remain in communication with the make up artist to our production. Luckily, everything seems to be going smoothly and we'll be hitting full production starting Tuesday for the next few weeks, which is going to be fun, challenging, and quite a bit of work.

Animatic Shoot and Finish Commercial

Jacob, Brian, Chris, Ganesh, Jared and I met at the mansion to shoot a run through of the script to do basic camera blocking and to get a timing idea of the script. I played Rosemary in the script run through. Although it took quite a bit of time, it was a neat experience to see the script come to life before we shot it. It gave a great sense of ideas how the gags will work, and made it even more funnier in person than just reading it on paper. We were able to foresee some problems that could be an issue before the actual shoot. Such as the door entrance, we originally planned for the entrance to be the back entrance of the mansion. After testing it, we determined the back entrance can still work for driving up, but use the front door as an entrance because it aesthetically looked better and was easier to do blocking for. After the runthrough, we re-shoot the messed up scene for the commercial that had focus issues. I did lighting for it. We were also able to use the actual phone we planned on using for the interstitials, so it gave a nice continuity connection to the interstitials itself. We also shot a day for night shot in the shadow of the mansion to do testing. That will be handed out to our VFX team Ganesh and Tyler to work on.