Last night was our first filming day, it went from 9pm to 3:30 am. This was our shoot day to do inserts for the lightshow and test out effects for future shooting days. Even though the shoot was long, we didn't get quite as many shots and I'd hoped, but it gave me a pretty good idea of what works and what doesn't for the on location days we'll have in the future.
First we just did some shots of the two actors sitting on a sofa and interacting, but it felt too much like an interaction at a home, so we decided to move everything around so make more empty space with a fully blank white wall for the set. We did some shots like the one on the left with both actors which I think will be great for during the buildup to the full lightshow scenes.
We then moved on to trying things out with the projector. Our first attempt looked like the picture on the left. While the lighting on them was good, the lightshow itself was barely noticeable, so we then tried one with a only a light pointing straight up towards the ceiling and having the projector as the only source of light hitting them. I much preferred this, as while their faces were much less lit, when the colors of the lightshow hit them the contrast was more noticeable, giving more of a feel of a night-club feel, which then felt like there was more concealing and revealing than them always being visible. We only got one short shot of it so I will definitely be trying more of this again when we have a reshoot day in the flat.
We then moved on to using a fishtank to put coloured dyes in. Our first try was having the actress in focus while the colors were out of focus, and while the wash of color was pretty, it wasn't as dramatic as I had hoped. For this first test we also used oil based dyes, which we were hoping would float down then back upwards to the surface, which didn't really work and made much more mess than we had expected, so we decided against doing that again. The second time we tried the fishtank we kept the water itself in focus, and that worked much better as the detail could be seen better in the water. Filling, emptying, and cleaning the fishtanks took ages so we could really only do two takes, but I'm very happy with how the second one came out, and using a combination of both will be interesting to play with the different focuses and colors.
While this shoot didn't make as many shots as I'd hoped, what we do have is definitely usable, and the things we won't use gave us an idea of what needs changed when on location. Our next shoot is in 2 days, in the university chapel, and we will only have 4 hours there to get everything we need, so I have a much more in depth shotlist and storyboard ready, and now that we know how to light the scenes using projectors more effectively, I'm confident that we'll be able to do the shoot in the time we have the location for.
I'm still trying to lock down our final location, but I have two places that have said it could be done there, so tomorrow I'm going in person to confirm details. Overall while the first shoot was long and stressful, I feel it gave us a good base to go off of, and I'm prepared for our next day to be more organised. Once one location shoot is done I know that what the film is turning into will start making much more sense, and I'll have an idea of what is missing and can be done with the footage.
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