Shot yesterday for about three hours. The red room should be finished, but as usual we left the set standing in case we need it again. Ben is happy that he can now shave his beard off. Before shooting we used some of Krissy's makeup to make his eyes look sunken and his complexion drawn and pale. Not quite sure how that looks yet. We talked about a bunch of strategies for making Ben look bleary eyed. His approach ended up being sticking his thumbs in his eyes for a few minutes.
The "ET effect" worked well but it's amazing how insensitive the camera is to smoke. To the naked eye, the room was incredibly smoky, like a 60's Elk's lodge on Saturday night. But on camera the smoke doesn't really show in any obvious way, you just see the light shafts. I sure hope that stuff is non-toxic like they claim. When we were done, the camera lens and my glasses were covered with a fine layer of oily substance. It's funny how smoke/fog is such a ubiquitous movie convention. I remember the other year when we tested some flashlight shots I was surprised because we didn't see shafts of light shooting up into the night sky like I was expecting.
The set ended up being really complicated. We had the one 500 watt backlight, a couple of colored floods, and another 500 watt fill. It seems like most of the time nowadays, we're using just two lights, a hard light raking in from an angle and a soft fill that also lights the background. Then we had a TV set going, the eye TV with a DVD loop and tons and tons of junk everywhere. In terms of the stuff David made, the clothes hangar stuff is the most visible. The tapes inside the cabinet are mostly obscured by the backlight. With these props we make the same tradeoffs as big budget films. Detail costs more (as in time spent), but gives you more options when shooting. It's annoying not to be able to do a shot because a prop/set doesn't have enough detail. Lighting also makes a difference. The red room lighting was dramatic so a lot of the details didn't show through. In the workroom, the lighting was brighter and all the detailing we did shows up, especially in HD.
That place was so full of junk that there are all kinds of little sloppy things in the shots. After I got home I realized that one of the red lights is plainly visible. During shooting, Ben found one shot that had an Omni prominently displayed. Reasons for these problems:
1. The set is so messy looking that it's hard to take everything in.
2. Same problem as usual with the lack of a true monitor.
3. Lack of DP to look for stuff like that before shooting.
4. Cramped, smoky, cat-hair filled working conditions makes you want to rush through shooting.
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