Last night we shot from 11 to 1. It took forever to light. I'm not sure why it's taking so long to light these days. I pretty much have only one lighting scheme—the Robert Rodriguez offside key with varying types of fill, so I always think it will go fast. We were trying to simulate a rainy day outside so we tried diffusing everything. But I tend to dislike soft lighting so I wanted some areas with hard light. So we have a soft/hard thing going. The lighting we ended up with is odd in the sense that it works the opposite of what you might think. There are two key points in the shot—Ben discovering the dead spinner and then Ben looking closely at the spinner. At both of these points, Ben's face is totally obscured in shadow. You only see him before and after. Acting via shadows. Ben says that in terms of acting, I'm always asking him to do nothing. I told him the Jack Lemmon story. Director: Give me less, Jack. Jack Lemmon: if I give you less I won't be doing anything! Director: Exactly.
Notes: Tota with diffusion and daylight gel outside the window, Omni pointed toward back of room. Far away Omni fill with umbrella. 25 watt lightbulb to the right of Ben's face. I cut the sequence together last night. I'm still not sure how it works. The edit fell into an interesting place in the Batman music and as usual, the music informed the edit. It caused me to really extend some shots for the better I think.
Tip of the day: we used the jib to do the pedestal down (sorry, I forget the more contemporary term for this move). The shot kept bouncing off the pillow I used to slow the camera. Finally I figured out it works best if you don't "land" on the pillow but actually push the jib down into the pillow with some force. Much better result and no bounce.
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