6th Day of Filming

Brief Information:

Date: Wednesday 14th January
Location: 57 Ramillies Crescent
Time of Day: Night

Time filming started: 4:00pm
Time filming finished: 8:00pm

Scene: 2
Shots: 51-58 Interior

Crew Present:
Deanna Hopps - Director and Make-up Artist
Cameron Hargreaves - Cinematographer (Camera) and Set Layout
Daniel Springthorpe - Sound and Costume
Charlotte Smith - Lighting and Directing

Cast Present:
Rebecca Chapman - Alice
Alex Marks - Richard

Summary of the Day:

Working out how to do mirror shots (shots 54/56/57)

Yesterday's filming took us all the way up to shot 51, which was where the argument went upstairs. To begin with Daniel, Cameron and I all crammed into the bathroom with Rebecca to film shots 54, 56 & 57. These shots were filmed looking into the mirror at the reflection of Rebecca and needed a lot of practise to get right. It also involved a new form of "water torture" as we all came to call it, as I had to soak a piece of tissue and squeeze it under Rebecca's eyes to make it look she had been crying because she wasn't able to cry on command. 

Because the bathroom was so small, it was incredibly cramped with four people, 2 reflectors and a tripod inside of it however we made it work and came out with some pretty cool shots. We did it by myself sitting on the floor and acting as Alex (doing the knocking on the door to help time Rebecca time her turn in shot 56) and holding the reflector, while Dan balanced on the side of the bath to aim the LED light in the particular area while Cameron did the filming. 

Once we had tackled those shots, it was time to move onto the hallway shots, where the viewer would see Richard walking up the stairs towards the bathroom door as well as the shot from half way up the stairs where Rebecca would run towards the camera and past it to show she is running to somewhere upstairs. It took a few takes to get rid of any dead space and to make sure that everything went align with the rule-of-thirds etc. Daniel did this bit of filming, without the tripod because it was too big to fit on the stairs and we also wanted a lot of hand held camera work to depict the chaos and the violence within the film. Having still camera work didn't seem right when somebody was distressed and running.

Because of the shorter time frame, we only had time to do a few shots so we were thankful that the shots we did actually only took about 2 takes each - which allowed any room for improvements and tea breaks because we managed to get them all done. We had wanted to start on the "falling-down-the-stairs" shot but we felt that doing that would be best for the next filming day because it we knew it would take a lot of co-coordinating and getting it spot on but in a safe way. Overall I, personally, felt today's filming went okay - there were a few reappearing issues that we had to once again deal with, however we got over them and recovered so that we were able to get on with the filming of the rest of the shots.