I hadn’t intended on shooting a film on Saturday night, but it happened. And that right there is the benefit of collaboration. We had a script, cameras, a basic lighting kit and space so there was nothing holding us back.
Potato (Working title) was written by collaborator and actor Adam Bennett. Was his motivation for the story was, I do not know but he told me that his original idea was to have a script that would begin comedic and develop into something much darker. My motivation was to shoot it in the most efficient manner possible which would yield the best result. We had just finished a small photo shoot so everything was ready to create a ‘Refn-like’ monologue akin to the solo sequences in Bronson (2010).
Nicholas Winding Refn and Tom Hardy’s portrayal of Bronson
I love this way of shooting a performance. Such a great effect is achieved from the use of lighting and an empty space to isolated the character in darkness. In the absence of any kind of funding, it is a great asset to the indie filmmaker. That said however, certain concessions had to be made on our shoot that prohibited us from getting the exact shots we wanted. Specifically this was due to the room size. Typically, we were shooting in a living room in central Salford with modern furnishings, this meant beautiful white walls; white walls which inconveniently reflects much of the light back into the lenses. While this did provide a very chilling ambient light as shown below, it was not the effect I was aiming for. Still we carried on.
Straight from Camera B
The shoot was a two camera set up with one fixed and one floating. Our lighting was set up to give us an evenly diffused and pale cast over Adams face and were positioned approximately 140º to give us a band of shadow down the bridge of his nose. One of Adams most notable features is his eyes and his ability to bring out a painful intensity which is often characterised by a redness. This is brought chillingly further into vision by the pale light and skin. I was truly devastated when having to colourise away from this base palette.
Carefully sketched onto a post it note. No expense spared.
When bringing the files into the edit, I had to resist the urge to go berserk with the colorisation. The difficulty was that our two camera set up was not configured as accurately as it should have been and Camera A (BMPC) was picking up a much warmer image than Camera B (A57). This is why the final result does not resemble the icy cold image as displayed above but bears harsher blue tones with a higher contrast. Being able to cut out the majority of the back wall from the image did bring us closer to our intended goal but it did lose us the elements that gave the shots there identity.
Edited, reluctantly
Of course I had fun along the way and made a full neon edit of the footage from Camera A. However, it is only colorisation and not actual lighting so is scrapped by default. I hope to always light scenes correctly rather than make cheap amendments later. The triumph of the project came from the results we got from our very basic lighting usage. Release of the film will follow shortly.
For good measure here is a still from the neon edit. Looks fine as a still image but if the colour is not applied the same way that light is applied then it will not behave as it should on a moving subject. The effect renders the footage unusable as far as I am concerned, pretty, but unusable.
The Neon Demon himself.
Inevitably, the editing and blogging process has lasted into the depths of the winter night. So here is where I sign off until next time.