Trick of the Dark- Shoot 3

Film shoot three, here it is, the other part of the ending, this is Scott in the hospital after waking up from the fight with Alex in the cave, this is when it is revealed that all was not as it seemed within the film and it is shown what the film was actually saying and how it revolves around the fact that the whole film represents an internal battle. So a lot of the film revolves on this scene but given that it on the whole was a very easy shoot and went smoothly but I will get to that because to begin with it started as all my shoots and potential shoots seem to, with someone dropping out, this time it was my actress who was going to play the wife, Rachael, so in this scenario I got very stressed if I am honest, with so little time left to shoot the film it felt somewhat like the whole thing was crumbling around me, as I do often in situations like this when things get overwhelming I spoke to my friend Alicia who then said she'd head straight to my set to fill the role, this was actually a huge weight off my mind and I know she has done acting previously so it wasn't as if I was getting an actress who would have no idea what she is doing, I don't know if she knows how much of a weight off of me it was but she definitely did me a solid. So now that the cast was consolidated and sorted the next thing was to finish off our hospital set, now disclaimer, I did not make the set and don't want to take credit for it, I told Andrew and Liam what I wanted from the set and then went to work and came back later the other day to a fantastic set that was almost exactly as I imagined it. So I then had to buy some hospital props and to move the bed around so that it was easier to get the shots we needed.

So now everything is ready we only had to shoot the scene now, we started with Roger's shots as the doctor, so we started on the set and shot his interactions with Scott in the scene from a series of singles on each character before doing a kind of two shot on the two of them so that we had some good coverage of them that edits together well. The next thing after getting this interaction was to get the part where Roger goes into the scene. We did this with a tracking shot along the corridor as he approaches the doorway. The way we did this was by putting a box on a wheelchair, securing this, and then taping the camera to the box and pushing this behind Roger as he walks toward the door, in this to make the scene more dynamic and authentic, we had Andrew push a cage for transporting boxes the other way so he was an extra that hopefully makes the scene look much more realistic and it makes the scene feel less like its in a uni and more like a hospital. In these scenes as well I feel I have really done well in making them vibrant to contrast the darkness of the cave, it was always my intent to have the hospital very light and bright to contrast the cave to highlight the light at the end of the tunnel and how he is out of the darkness in his life, I feel we really captured this and it will show in the final film.

So after shooting all of  Roger's shots we had a lunch break and settled expenses with Roger before we started shooting the section with Stephen and Alicia. A small issue arose in this scene that in the original script they had a child together and this meant there was no dialogue needed because there would be an unspoken moment whereby Stephen picks up his son and just watches TV with him, however, there was neither the need nor the possibility of having a child which meant me, the crew and cast had to think of a whether we needed to add a line in to the scene between Scott and his wife, after spit balling a few ideas we eventually came to the conclusion that it should remain unspoken and she should just grab his hand in support and sort of wait until he is ready to talk about it. So from here we did basically the same again, we got basic shot coverage as that was all that we required really, and then from here the only thing left to do was to get a pull-out shot as Scott watched the TV to match up with a pull-in on the screen as the weight of what he is seeing hits home, as we didn't have the slider, Liam had to do this by shortening one tripod leg and pulling the tripod back while tilting the other way to make a pull out which after a few attempts it worked fine and we got the exact shot I was looking for. Having gotten that shot we didn't get the reverse of the TV but this can be done anytime as we only need a monitor and a white wall so we will get this as a pick up at a later date. So we wrapped up shooting after getting some cutaways and such and now we can say we have the final scene shot and ready to be put into a sequence.