WELL

Today was a pretty productive day, I bought green screen cloth, and checked out the wearhouse/industrial unit where im going to shoot.

I first went to the warehouse were I checked out the position that I was going to film in, and also took measurements for the green screen. It ended up being 4.2 meters across and because I wanted the cloth to be against the wall, and then drape down onto the floor, I had to make it extra longer, so the length was 6 meters, so 4.2 x 6 meters. I took some test shots of the particular wall, with some gas canisters in place of actors to judge how they would look against the wall with the camera. I’m quite confident that the green screen will be big enough, my only qualm is that because I wanted a piece of cloth that was so big, I had to get it in 3 pieces.

To account for this, I told the fabricator to make the middle piece a little bit bigger, so that when the 3 pieces are against the wall, the middle piece will overlap. The other concern that I have is with the lighting, and I am considering using Billy Blue’s lighting. If I cannot obtain their lights, I will either have to rent flood lights, or find some alternative method of gaining them. I did some research and I found that most green screen’s colour is simply called “chroma green” and the colour that I got is pret

ty close to it, so if I hang the cloth up correctly, and light it well, I should get a pretty good key.

With the Industrial unit, I am planning to shoot at night, so it will be quite, the only thing is that when I was there today, it was raining, and the roof is a thick corrugated iron, so the rain made a really loud noise, so fingers crossed that it doesn’t rain on the night im going to shoot. I will also be using the mic from Billy blue, it will plug straight into my 7d, but seeing as i only have 1 mic, with 2 characters saying dialogue, i think that for some shots i will have to re shoot just for sound’s sake, and that should be alright because there wont be allot of gear movement, and the other advantage is shooting it behind the green screen, so cutting and pasting different shots of the actors together won’t be difficult.

After watching the intro to sin city, of which my piece is based, i took a look at mine in terms of the dialogue, and realised that I needed to work on it further to create deeper layers for the audience. Tarintino is really, really good at this, the way he makes his characters talk, and how he gives them depth really forces the audience to be drawn in. I’m going to have to ponder on this for a while. I know the basic actions that I want to happen, its pretty much girl pulls up in car to meet a man, they talk for a bit, then girl shoots man. But all the inbetween stuff, why she shoots him, what did he do? what did she do? do they know each other etc I have to work out and work into the story.

I know that I’m going to have to work hard on the post, but what I’m thinking at the moment is that I dont want this to be a piece that is only visually stunning, I think for me as a movie goer, a part of the audience, I want my piece to be deeper, to not only be visually stunning, but to have substance, meaning and layers that, once again, draw the audience in.

I’ll leave you with some shots I took of the Industrial Unit, and you’ll be able to see where I will be placing the green screen, how i will place the actors etc.

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