Trick of the Dark- Shoot 4

Finally, we got to film in the cave, cutting it late but we had a productive day ahead of us to turn the shoot around, so whats the worst thing that can happen when you have a heavy schedule and a lot to shoot in one day. Boom, you have to spend 2 hours waiting for the tide to go out so that you can get to your set. This was because the tide time I looked at must have been simply wrong because me and Liam both looked at the tide times and planned accordingly. This wasn't a huge disaster though as it gave me time to go over what I wanted to shoot with Liam as well as to have a dinner break before we started shooting so we could do a solid chunk of filming with little interruption. We also took the opportunity to do some stone skimming but I don't think its worth me going into detail on that one.

Eventually I had enough of sitting around waiting for the tide and decided instead to wade through what was left with the equipment, probably not wise but with Ryan's assistance, we got the equipment through without a drop of water on it. So then when we got the actors across after us we set about shooting the first scene on my list which was the first scene in the cave within the film. This was a relatively simple task as we had already gotten the close-ups and mids on Stephen and Stephanie in the studio shoot so I asked Brad to shoot these on Gary to make up for him not being on the original shoot while Liam shot the wide for coverage. This was a relatively simple process which meant that we cleared this scene relatively quickly and got good coverage. The advantage of the two camera set up too was that it freed up Liam to be a little more creative and add movement in his shots a little to make the film that little bit more filmic.

 The second scene we shot was again another which we had coverage from the studio so this meant for the first half we had the same set up as the previous scene that we shot that I have just spoken about, until it lead to the second half of the scene when the two men stand up and confront each other. When it got to this bit we had Brad on one camera hand held and Liam on another so that we could follow them up and get close-ups on the two with relative ease. It is worth mentioning at this point that I was up on a ledge to fill in for the role of the Man in the scene and I threw down a banana to mark the point where the lunch box hits the floor and breaks the tension. This is why in the picture below I am triumphantly holding a script and a banana. This scene played out quite well as they were never sure when exactly I was going to throw it down and as such we get what are I feel authentic reactions to the action that plays out.

Then the final and most challenging part of the day was to film the final cave scene where we see the altercation with the knife between Alex and Scott. The issue with this was that we practised the spinning dark knight shot, however as we changed to a better lit location than originally planned, we sacrificed the space we previously had, this then meant that we could no longer do the rotating motion, after deliberating with Liam about how we still do this and do a similar motion we decided that with a backwards tracking shot on Gary and a forward on Stephen we would be fine and still create the mood we were looking for, I feel in all honesty that this worked and particularly I though Gary did a great job of getting on board and pacing the scene in a manner that reflected the anger and built up tension in the scene. After this we got cutaways and a shot of Stephanie getting out of the sleeping bag followed by a shot that dips in and out of focus that reflects Scott going unconscious, this shot took a few attempts but by the final one I feel Liam really nailed it and got an excellent shot.

This was all but the end of the shoot but briefly while we were debating if we were done, Liam suggested we quickly shoot a mini night scene whereby Alex is inspecting the knife and contemplating the actions he will do in the next scene, we agreed this was a good idea to shoot it and so we quickly got some basic shots and cutaways and packed up on what was a very productive although tiring shoot day.