last Friday we filmed probably the most challenging scene in the film. The heroine of the piece, Vicky Andrews is tortured for information she has about a high profile official who is defecting, and the torturers carry out their task in an abandoned meat chiller as a means of disguising their activities.
The scene presented a number of challenges:
It was a confined space
it was physically demanding on the actress as she is supposed to be suspended from the ceiling rails.
It was also filmed in a working butchery which presented some sound challenges.
In terms of my creative goals for the scene, my goal was not to graphically depict torture, but to show the main character's responses. It therefore required a wide master to show context with cutaway close ups to compliment. This is a key dramatic moment in the film, which reveals the true nature of the antagonist as well as a defining moment for the protagonist.
Ungraded
Graded - I feel like the grade really works in terms of getting the appropriate look for the meat locker.
I felt really off on the day, and while I shot some good close shots, under the pressure I didn't shoot the most appropriate wide shot. Also the actor who plays the antagonist did not feel happy with his rendering of his character. Whilst I have some workable shots, and can make a sequence out of them, I feel it might require some pick ups to complete it and give the actor and myself another opportunity to get it right.
This sequence was meant to be Lachlan's last recollection of what he sees from this experience.
In terms of practice, the idea with hand held naturalistic film making were not altogether observed. One important concept espoused by Barry Ackroyd, cinematographer for Paul Greengrass's Captain Phillips and Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker & Detroit says that their needs to be a great flexibility on the film set, to allow actors and camera man to move freely to follow the action. The number of people in the space (including crew) as well as lighting set forced me to have a very narrow view of the set and did not allow me freedom to move the camera as I would have liked.
In terms of lighting, I have approached the shoot by using lighting only to support existing light sources. We used the overhead flourescent light that was in the space to light the scene, but brought in one LED to light to compliment the set up and and lift the lighting levels to avoid grainy shots.
In hindsight, the answer was to clear the room of crew that had completed their tasks, and have only those that were necessary to be there. In addition, the light could have been mounted on the ceiling rails to avoid any stands in the space to allow freedom of movement for camera and actors.
Some practice that was observed was to allow the actors to complete the entire scene without cutting, therefore allowing them to feel as if they are not acting, but are actually apart of the scene. Typically one would cut and reset to capture another action, especially in a complex scene like this, but I felt it would be better to allow them to carry out the entire action without having to break character. This creates more pressure for them though, as they have to memorize the entire scene's action and dialogue. Ideally this would then be captured on a two or three camera set up to allow a more coherent continuity in editing.