The end of Day 3

We are now down with day three of the Las Vegas shoot. We shot some of scene 12, which involves Rebecca lying in bed (it's a play on words). He enters the room and sets some flowers down on a pillow next to her. He then proceeds to smoke his Carlboro cigarettes untill she wakes up. Jarrod accuses her of setting the whole marriage thing up. For the scene I need to utilize the existing sunlight coming in from 2 large picture windows on the opposite side of the room. I supplemented it with a 1K gelled with CTB (Color temperature Blue) to match the daylight color. I also used a tota light with a blue gel to raise the base light level in the room.

Since the scene grows more and more confrontational by the minute, I decided to shoot it mostly handheld (with the FigRig). I started with an establishing shot with the 28mm wide angle. As the characters got more "in-your-face" with eachother, I got closer and switched to the 50mm. The scene ends with Rebecca running off to lock herself in the bathroom. We are shooting that part of the scene tomorrow, pretty much all day.

After having a so-so dinner at a restraunt in the hotel, we moved on to the scene where Aldo shows up at Jennifer's room for the first time. I wanted a smooth-moving pullback of the two characters walking into the room, which means another Dolly/Crane move. The shot involves not only a dolly move and a pedestal up move, but also a 180 degree pan following Jarrod and ending on a big picture window. The shot is very difficult to light because we don't have control over the hotel room like we would on a set. I can't fly walls out if they are in my way, also I can't attach lights to the ceiling. So, in an effort to keep the lighting simple and effective, I pointed everything at the white ceiling and just hoped for the best. This got rid of most of the shadows my crane was casting on the walls.

We had another problem when it came to the window. It was not only reflecting Jarrod and Rebecca, but also the crane, the camera, myself and Geoff. This problem was remedied by wrapping Geoff with a bedsheet that was similar in color to the wallpaper. We also wrapped the crane in beige masking tape, which was also the same color as the wallpaper. This helped the make the crane less visible in the reflection. The problem of me obeying reflected was solved by me ducking down just after the movie as completed. So, after all that work, we finally shot the scene and it looked great. I am really happy with our footage so far. After we finished, we went down to the casino floor and I won $200! Jarrod played blackjack and won some money too. Our scene tomorrow starts around 1:00, so stay tuned for more updates!