Alice- Shoot 3: Party

Here it is people, the crown jewel of Alice, and that is precisely what it turned out to be, a fantastic experience for so many reasons and I genuinely believe we pulled off a scene/shot that will be celebrated at our university for a long time to come.

First came the prep which started at one, we set up all of the lights and moved the furniture to optimise the space and to make it look like a party. Then we actors started to arrive we did practise run throughs to ensure the actors could be comfortable with where they would be going and there timings etc so that the scene could be fluid and natural so that the camera felt like it was a natural part of the scene, otherwise regardless of the camera work the scene wouldn't work.

 Then at around 6 we started to shoot some takes of the scene, though it was not yet dark outside it was starting to get that way and we felt that it would be too big of a waste of time to not start shooting and on top of this, Beth could probably make it look like night time with a colour grade so it made sense to start shooting. The first few takes to me felt a little wooden and didn't seem to flow, but this could be expected with such a complex scene as it would take some practise and repetition to get into the groove of the scene.

When we eventually did start getting into the groove and flow of shooting the scene, boy did it work. The reason for the success of this scene I feel is because it was organic, this was essentially a controlled party and as such this felt real on camera. For me there was more to this than the performances of the actors (though they were important and fantastic) the scene is great because the extra work feels genuine and the performances aren't really performances at all, even when we did silent takes it still felt as though people were at a genuine party which I can only assume we achieved by giving it a good atmosphere that people enjoyed being a part of. I could really talk for hours about this shoot but at the end of the day its ambition and execution speak for themselves.