Trick of the Dark- Shoot 5

Shoot 5 for TOTD, the final stretch is at hand for sure, this was the penultimate shoot and it marks the first instance of me taking advantage of the week long extension that I was given. So basically these scenes were in the original script in order to A break up the cave so the audiences weren't bored of one location and to B flesh out a relationship between Scott and his wife so that she didn't appear as some random woman at the end of the film who is visiting him in a hospital. In the original script this was their purpose, although in the reimagining of the film which Andrew created from the footage we had up to this point instead their purpose was slightly different though basically the same, it was still to establish a relationship between the two but in this case it was more vital as there was no prior mention or view of her before now so it was vital to get at least one scene of her to establish that she is not random. And while she is there to break up the cave, this is no longer as vital because the hospital footage was now also being used to do this.

So we had three scenes to shoot, though having seen the edit and had conversations with Andrew about what we needed to add to the film in terms of scenes, it seems that not all of them will be used but I wanted to shoot them all the same because it is much better to have them and not need them than it is to need them and not have them. That being said, the first scene was an early scene where Rachael is put through to Scott's answering machine and leaves a message saying that she hasn't heard from him all day and that they should 'go out or something'. This scene is important because it is an establishment of their relationship but also it highlights that something is awry. The scene itself was shot in my back garden and originally was where you see the above shot, however, we had to move to a different part of the garden.

So the reason we moved is because the area we were using would not stay lit, the security light we were using was on a timer and no amount of movement we tried would keep it on long enough, however, the side light which lights this shot would stay on indefinitely, no idea why but it worked. The reason that we had to use the security lights was that we had not gotten the LEDs that we had booked out, I did not pick up the equipment so as such cannot comment on why this happened but it meant we had to adapt and as such we decided to use the security light and the fading light of the day, luckily my garden is south facing so gets light for as long as possible. So we shot this scene with the lighting available and got a three shot coverage on Alicia of a Mid, a Wide and a Close-up, in doing this it meant we had ample coverage that would make a scene, which in all honesty would only be a few seconds when edited together. We then found that there may be a lip syncing issue so we started to shoot a reverse of the mid shot from behind Alicia as a safety shot in case we needed to cut away from her mouth to sync the sound.

This is where we encountered a potentially shoot ending issue, the camera died. Now this was a big issue as we had no spare battery and no charger. So, to adapt to this I borrowed my Dads DSLR, which coincidentally is the same model of camera we used to shoot Inheritance and Alice so the crew and myself were familiar with its operation, the only issue being the footage quality suffered because of the camera change and as such the footage we did take may be unusable due to the change, but again it was better to have it and not need it than to not have it and need it. This was the first scene done and as such we moved into the kitchen to get a second scene which in the original script adds tension because she is now more frantically trying to get through to Scott, this was a single short line over the phone which we got in one freehand Mid shot because there was no need for more coverage on this. Then we got the final of the intended scenes at a bus stop just outside my house. The reason for the location was that it was Rachael on the phone to the doctor and we assume from the location and the conversation that she is rushing to see him, in hindsight this makes little to no sense because when she sees him in the hospital it is clearly day and at the point of shooting it was very dark so it wouldn't match, in addition to this, there probably wouldn't be buses running at that time. All that being said, Liam did a beautiful shot where he started on the bus stop light and then came down to see Alicia on the phone, this was really nicely shot and the visuals in the scene looked great, though the issue remains that the footage in all likelihood wont match the black magic footage but we will have to wait and see.