While writing Trick of the Dark, I wanted to create a scene that builds tension in a similar way to how The Dark Knight scene below does this in terms of camera work. The way that the free camera rotates and keeps close in to the erratic subject adds tension into the scene and makes the scene both uneasy and also unpredictable due to the unhinged nature of Ledger's Joker. In my scene I would like Alex to portray a similar erratic nature where we (as an audience) really don't know what he will do next. The motivation in the scene for this is that he has snapped in the cave scenario and is lashing out because the isolation both from the world and from the other two people in there has gotten to him and as such he is threatening them with a knife, although he is unhinged and not thinking straight, he doesn't know himself how it will play out and because of that it adds a level of tension that filters from the performance.
Having now established the motive of the scene, It then comes down to the mechanics of how we make it work, below is our result and I would like to spend some time talking about how we achieved what we did. Firstly, we tried the camera just handheld on Liam's shoulder, this was nowhere near stable enough and as a result we decided that the best way to now deal with the shake and jitters issue was to put the camera on the fig rig and to shoot it on this, in doing this Liam was coming from a much more stable stance and as such the camera was able to flow better which was no end of benefit to the scene, I have no doubt in Liam's ability to get the shot without the fig rig but in saying that, there is no sense in not using the fig rig if it is beneficial, which it is. At this point, we know that the camera work was fine, the next thing for me to get sorted was the choreography of the scene in terms of both where the actors would be going and also in terms of where Liam would be going in reaction to their movement.
What I wanted was Shaun to approach Ryan and then to back off as though considering his actions, because Alex the character is distressed and having an internal war with himself and as such is trying to both instigate the conflict and distance himself from it. It is as Alex reenters the conflict I want the camera to do the same and tightly frame everyone so as to draw the audience in and add to the tension.The camera then circles around as Shaun does too so as to keep the focus upon the faces of the two and also on the knife (in this case a chisel) so as to keep the focus on thing that is causing the conflict, the knife in this case is a visualisation of the battle and the aggression of the two men. I must admit, I absolutely love this shot, Liam did an excellent job of mimicking the Dark Knight shot and I feel that this will do precisely what I want it to in the final film should we take this forward. The other key part of the scene in terms of shot is the dipping out of focus in the final shot as Scott goes unconscious. This was mostly improvised from Liam, I had the idea of the shot but didn't tell him when to do it, it mainly stems from the organic nature of the scene, so Liam thought about when and how fast someone would fade out of consciousness, (whether he did this from active thought or subconsciously, you'd have ask him) this he did really well and the shot really mimics someone fading away perfectly and we will almost certainly take this forward. On the whole, this test was a great success and the only thing that may limit us using it in the same way we have here is whether the space we shoot in will allow it.
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