Circus - Street Shoot #2 and Circus

Today we planned to do some of the circus (sadly without the clown as we have had to recast). We also had to redo the tracking dolly street shot again as looking back at it yesterday, it was a bit of a mess. 

Weeeeeeee

Thanks to Beth for this video!

We did a few takes (close up and wide) but if I got it so all three of the actors were in, we could see the classroom no matter what. So we fixed this by finding a curtain and putting boxes on the floor. 

Our producer sticking up the curtain

11 takes later, we moved on to the circus shots. There was a huge white block in the middle of it, but it could be moved (luckily! They also refrained from putting music on for us for sound). We did the Zoltar scene first and the director came up with a new trippy angle involving the crystal ball on the right side of the frame (to dirty the shot) and using the slider to get a close up of Lacee. We had to put the crystal ball on top of some ladders, on top of some duct tape, on top of a container (sadly no pictures of this!) and the shot itself looks pretty impressive. 

The director directing Lacee

Moving onto the next scene, where the Dad gives Sophie money for sweets and the rides. This took some time as batteries were running out. And we needed to buy strawberry laces. 

Tillie helping me dirty up the pick and mix cup so it fits with the aesthetic

Actors also needed to hit marks spot on otherwise they went out of frame. It took a few takes, but we got it. We also did each scene with various angles, close ups and cutaways. We also did a demon eye cutaway for the editor to play around with.

Overall, a good days shoot! Can't wait to look back at the edited footage. 

*update* Turns out some of the close ups for the street scene have a tiny soft focus. It was hard to focus as they were moving around a lot, ideally I would have a focus puller, as I could not tell and I was busy tracking the actors.

Circus - Street Shoot

Today we filmed some of the street scenes (apart from the Clown since we can't get hold of the actor, so we may have to recast and do the trombone shot again (noooooooooo)). One of the actors turned up a few hours late and another one had to be done by 1:30 so this wasn't the best of starts, but we got everything set up and we were finished on time for the actor to leave.

We were going to do the jib shot with the actors walking in, however, the focus is completely out for the actors and I can't change it as it's too high and I will be operating the jib. So we decided to do this last and without the actors.

Credit to Janice for the picture

We did the dolly shots and also a few close ups so there's variation to cut between. I'm slightly worried that the dolly has some of the classroom next door into it and also the framing might be a little off, but I can't tell until we watch it back. *small update- yep this did happen, but the wider angle looked better than it zoomed in as I got everyone in... even if I did get some of the classroom in. If the Dad moves slightly to his right, it may cover it. We will probably have time to reshoot tomorrow, and hopefully with better sound*

Sound was also a huge issue. We asked if they could keep quiet for a minute when we call "silence on set", but they didn't and drills and all sorts kept going off. Dubbing maybe a good option here. 

We only got one production still today sadly (we had our hands a bit full).

Gerry and The Cancelled Street Scene

Just realised the title of this post sounds like a Harry Potter movie title.

Anyways, we filmed Tag on the morning, which went well even though we had a bit of a late start. Nothing much really to report apart from the interrogation scene is DONE!!!!!!!

I helped the director put gels on our cardboard cut out of the goblin (now baptised as Gerry the Generic Goblin), so it would look awesome as a silhouette and with a light shining through it.

We got the equipment for filming on the night out in plenty of time in advance as we got pretty such all of stores out. It's a good thing we did too as there was a screw missing from the jib. After everything was set up, me, and both the sound op and boom op waited at Production Design for a bit them realised that the actors were being a while. We headed back over and realised we were missing the actor who plays the girlfriend. We waited an hour after call time to see if she would turn up or contact us. She didn't, so we had to call it off, and possibly recast.

Here's proof of all the equipment being up 

Circus - Car Scene

Today we filmed the car scene. It was all going really well, all the actors arrived and we had all the equipment out. And then it started torrential raining. We persevered and still filmed (as much inside the car as possible, and covered the equipment where it was possible). We did originally want to use red heads as streetlights but could no longer do this today due to the rain. 

We also couldn't do production logs or production stills due to to the weather and lack of bodies willing to go out in the rain (which is understandable). We just wanted it all done quickly and well, and get warm! We made sure the actors were also warm.

We were done fairly quickly since we have done so many test shoots of the car scene before, so we knew what we wanted and could be done really fast. We looked at the footage back on Friday and most of it looks great in my opinion (the slider shot was very dark though). The lecturer wasn't very happy with the lighting and the windows of the buildings outside (and also the make up), and now that the actress hasn't turned up to the next day's shoot, and has gone incommunicado, we may have to recast. 

I will update this post with screenshots of the clips, or maybe the edited scene, even though it maybe irrelevant. 

Tag - Grand Hotel Test Shoot

The Grand Hotel finally got back to me so we went to film a bit of test footage on Tuesday. I was also an actor with the editor for this project (just to use as composition for the test footage). It went well, but we were a bit short for time. Even though they eventually got back to me, it would still be good to get a back up as it take 3 cancelled shoots to finally film today. 

Here's the edited footage.

Clown Trombone Shoot

Today we got just the actor playing the clown in for just the trombone shot, as it took us a whole day to do it last time. We set up in the morning and got the actor in on the afternoon. We picked up the costume from Fashion and got him straight into make-up. We had Zoe and Danny from Production Design (my housemates too) to do his make up. The director contacted them in advance with what she wanted and they did a few tests until she was happy with the result. It took about an hour to get the actor into make up and costume which is good to consider for the other shoots. 

We got the trombone shot in the very first take, which looked the best compared to the other takes. It looks very scary and the effect works! 



(not sure what the bump at the end is! Might be me hitting the clamp on the track)

We also did a few close up shots for the editor to experiment with. I think the director might scrap the eye effect as it may cheapen the film, and the lighting I used is a bit too dark. I decided to go for a noir kind of effect with one side of the clown's face in shadow as it gives that bit of darkness to him. 

The Pay Gap

The pay gap between men and women in the workplace is acknowledged and beyond debate. In many western countries, men are paid an average of 20% more than their female colleagues. Globally the figure grows to around 30%. However, you can negotiate pay going freelance. The article gives stories about this. http://www.theknowledgeonline.com/the-knowledge-bulletin/post/2015/10/07/tackling-the-film-industrys-gender-pay-gap

According to US labour department data, women in the arts, entertainment, sports and media industries earned 85% of male counterparts’ pay last year. For women working full time in all sectors, the figure was 82.5%. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/29/hollywood-equal-pay-women-change-yet-to-come

In 2015, female full-time, year-round workers made only 80 cents for every dollar earned by men, a gender wage gap of 20 percent. According to our research, if change continues at the same slow pace as it has done for the past fifty years, it will take 44 years—or until 2059—for women to finally reach pay parity. https://iwpr.org/issue/employment-education-economic-change/pay-equity-discrimination/