Production

For my actual shoot, Jemma and I booked out the studio theatre to shoot in. I thought the studio theatre would be an ideal place to shoot my film because of the lack of windows and the black curtains that I could use as a back drop.
My actor contacted me less than an hour before the shoot to tell me that he could no longer make it. Luckily, because Jemma was doing her shoot at the same time, in the same space, I got to use her actor instead.

We decided that Jemma should shoot first, as she had less to do. 

When it came to shooting mine, scene 2 was probably the hardest to light. I'd had the idea to light the second characters face only partially, so only his mouth was illuminated. I did this because he's a character we don't see much of in the film. We hear a lot about him and his power in the city, due to his wealth and connections, but the idea is we don't physically see him until this shot. The idea surrounding just lighting his mouth was based on the fact that this is a character that we had only previously heard about from other characters. What we're lead to know about him thus far is all through 'hear-say' and not based on fact. So by lighting his mouth, it was kind of a way of showing the audience a truer representation of the character. We're hearing directly from the character a suggestion of what kind of man he is and the power he has. The other character then takes off his hat, to symbolise his loss of self respect and pride, as the other character has got a hold over him, and has essentially "won".

The reason that this shot was so hard to arrange was purely because the strip of light I wanted to lay across his face was really hard to make narrow enough. I wanted it t be a slither of light so the rest of his face was in darkness. I spent a lot of time moving the light further from the subject and increasing the brightness and then moving it closer and decreasing the brightness and changing the position of the lights to create the desired effect. Eventually, I found that having the light extremely close to the subject but on a very low brightness was the best way to do about doing it, although it was difficult because of the distance between the subject and camera, the light getting in shot was a bit of an issue, but I got there in the end.


Scene 3 was also a bit fiddly because of the fan cover I used. If it was too close to the light, the criss-cross pattern became non-existent on my subject, but the closer you put it to the subject, the harsher the shadows were and the clearer the pattern. This would have been simple enough, except the fan cage was really quite small, so there was a very small threshold between having the fan close enough to the subject to see the shadow clearly, and having the shadow fully cover the subject, too. I used the fan cover to represent how the character was feeling in the scene. In this sequence, she has been found by her powerful and wealthy partner, whom she has betrayed. She knows it is impossible to run from him as he has the power and means to find her, and she knows she can't earn back his trust or loyalty. She can't run or hide from him, so she just excepts whatever fate lies in store for her.

Scene 1 was rather straight forward to shoot. I shot it in my house in the living room the day after our shoot in the studio theatre. The lighting set up was rather simple, although the cramped conditions meant I couldn't get the lights to cover as much as the set I wanted them too.
It was during a take I noticed how the actors shadow on the wall behind him got bigger as he leaned forward. My intention for this shot was for the character to sit in the bright light and lean forward as he developed an idea/plan. When I saw how the light made his shadow react, I immediately thought it's be a great way to visually represent the idea growing inside his head.