End of Day 4!

We just finished shooting Scene 6. As I have stated before, Scene 6 is a whopping six pages long, so getting it done is an important milestone. We worked on the stuff in the bathroom. It was nice shooting in there, because the lighting was already pretty bright. We used both the 28mm f2.8 (with the gain turned up to 3db) as well as the 50mm f 1.7 . As Rebecca posted previously, the scene is emotionally intense and requires a lot of energy from both actors. Whereas the previous part of scene 12 was mostly handheld to reflect the mood of the actors, this half of the scene was all tripod mounted stuff because the characters are talking calmly about their situation.

As before in the scene with Jarrod talking to himself, we tried to dampen the sound in the bathroom as best as we could. We taped a furni-pad to the ground to eliminate the sound reflecting off of it. I also took the comforter off the bed and hung it over the shower. This eliminated a lot of the resonance in the bathroom while still retaining the overall ambient quality.

After the main shots with the actors were done, we moved on to the signature shot of the movie (hopefully). The shot involves Aldo flipping a casino chip up in the air and letting it land on the ground. For the shot, we used the Kessler Crane with the short tip. This let me position the camera right up against the ceiling, pointing directly down at Aldo. For this shot (and this shot only) we removed the M2 adapter and shot with the DVX stock lens. I did this because it would be impossible to get the focus just right with the M2 adapter because of the extreme changes in distance in such a short amount of time.

After about 30 tosses of the chip, we finally got one that worked just right where the chip landed in just the right place. I was very happy that we were shooting on video and not film! After that shot, we cleaned up the room a bit and shot what I am thinking is going to be a deleted scene. The scene is Rebecca waiting for Aldo to arrive. It's about 3 minutes of just watching what she does when she is waiting. It's a funny scene to me because, it's one of those situations where you don't want to get really engrossed in something and then have the person show up, but at the same time, you don't want to seem anxious so you do small, menial tasks around the room.
Rebecca preforms her random, menial tasks in the future deleted-scene. (Click to enlarge)

After that scene, we moved on to a scene that has been postponed as long as possible. Aldo and Jennifer have to make-out against the door of the room. This didn't really bother myself or Jarrod, but Rebecca (also my girlfriend) had some misgivings about me filming the scene. So I volunteered Geoff for the job and I went in the bathroom to wait for her. We set up just outside the door, using a 50mm f1.4 and the FigRig. Even with the f1.4 lens, I still had to turn the gain up to 3db to get a well enough lit picture. The first take was good, but Rebecca wasn't able to get the door open. The second take was good as well, but unfortunately, Rebecca leaned into him a little too hard and she ended up cutting her lip with one of his teeth. (Whoops!) After some minor first aid, we we're ready for take 3. Take 3 went great. They really got the tone of the scene and totally committed to it. Geoff had to keep both hands on the FigRig, so he wasn't able to pull focus. As a result, anytime they moved closer to him, he just moved back slightly to keep them in focus. It's an effect that works really well in the scene and reflects their "somewhat altered "POV as well. As an added bonus, when the door finally does open, they both seem to fall down into the room. It's great punctuation to the scene.

Tomorrow all I have to shoot is a scene in an elevator (Aldo says "whee"!). We do need to do the ADR work tomorrow too, but that shouldn't be too taxing. (A few hours of work) After that, the day is ours to do whatever we want with. Stay tuned kids!