The shoot's done...until May!

I'm quite happy with the shoot this weekend. I did manage to get some knitting done on them. The rooms we shot in were so small that I had no choice but to sit in the next room while the camera was rolling, so the sound guy couldn't pick up the sound of my needles. I got a few Christmas presents done. I'll post those up very soon. For now, here are a few pictures of the actual film.


Friday started off as a cold snowy night and regrettably the DOP and I had decided that we would love to shoot the whole diner scene from the outside. It looked nice but it was freezing! In this scene, the couple is really not getting along. They're having a very passive aggressive conversation over pogs and hamburgers. We thought that it would be nice to have the seperation of the glass between the audience and characters. The snow was falling and we caught some beautiful light reflections from cars on the windows.
Last year, my grandmother was throwing out a paint-by-number painting that my grandfather had made in the '70s. It's a boat caught in a storm, pretty ugly. I grabbed it (just in case) I've managed to put it on a few sets that are too bland. This set specifically was lacking a bit of colour, so I threw it in. Try to catch it in the photos.






The next location was a very small bathroom that could barely fit the actor and the camera. But I really loved the tiling in the washroom.










I did manage to get some knitting done on this one!

The last day was in the male charcter's kitchen. The time of day is supposed to be late at night, but the DOP placed these very white diffused lights in the windows. I'm not sure what that will look like on screen.

The hardest part about shooting in a kitchen/living room is the fact that people sit on the couch and move all the pillows around or eat the fruit that I bought as props to sit on the counter in his kitchen. People are too comfortable in these settings.

It's all over for now. We'll see what happens with the rest of the shoot in May. It might not show, but it's a hard job. There's so much preperation before the shoot. Then the actual day of, you're there before anyone because they can't work until you're done setting up. You're always last to leave because you can't start taking your set down until after the lights come down (making my days add up between 10 -16 hour days). Also, I end up cleaning the mess left behind by the crew. When we're shooting in people's homes, sometimes the rest of the crew goes to hang out in different rooms, they move things, read their books, sleep on their beds and leave their garbage everywhere. I'm always the one who has to meet with the homeowners and negotiate the use of their places. So when I leave, I need to clean everything and try to remember if things were moved by us or them, and make beds (really not something in my job description). I always have people phonening me weeks later asking me where their remote control went or who broke a vase. It's really not very respectful of people, but I'm too busy to be the one to manage that while I'm on set.

I wish that I could just get paid to knit and watch films all day. There has to be a job that falls under that description.

Less knitting, more movie making!

I always think that I'll get so much knitting done on film shoots. I'm thinking that once I've placed the set for the shot, all that's left to do is sit back and watch. No not really, I'm always moving things and hiding tape or glare or spray painting small spots... As well as the fact that once they yell "Action!", everyone needs to be extremely quiet on set. There can't even be a plane passing overhead. So knitting is too noisy.

Here are some photos of the sets that were shot up to now. The pictures were taken by Safe Solvent who's a fabulous photographer/graphic designer/web designer/does everything kinda guy ( http://www.safesolvent.com/ )






The first ones are of the female character's bedroom. It's a sunny saturday morning and the young lovers are waking up late and cudling in bed.



Because the film is called "washed in blue", we decided that there would be the colour blue present through out the film. In this scene, I wanted it to be cozy and on the walls. As things begin to worsen between the characters, the lighting turns blue. At the end there's no more blue. It just dissapears from their lives completely.













As some of you might notice from an older post, we cut out trying to make a silhouette on the window and instead we just blasted white light in.
































The next scene was shot in "The Village" at a restaurant called The Sandwicherie. The director really wanted flashing neon lights and that's what he got! It looked great, except for the fact that I forgot that the dinner had a chrome surface, so all of our lights really reflected on it. But I found that using silver duct tape hid all the flareing that the DOP complained about.

I'm really enjoying working with this great team. The DOP is doing a wonderful job lighting and making decisions about the camera angles and movement. The actors are really getting the characters...anyway, everyone's on the ball. Next weekend's shoot will be fun. I'll keep you posted with more photos.

A new set!

I'm presently working on art direction for a film. I've actually had the script for this one for almost a year now, but it didn't look like it would happen. Then, two weeks ago, they decided to shoot half of it at the end of november! At first (as usual) I thought that the set would be pretty straight forward; a bedroom, a kitchen... You know, normal places. But when you start doing research your head starts to spin with ideas! So it's getting pretty elaborate. On top of it, it's really hard to find appartments to film in that have a bedroom or kitchen large enough to fit all the lights, the camera, the crew...the actors. Especially ones that you are allowed to paint. I guess if we had a larger budget anything would be possible, but we don't. Anyway, I'll post some photos up soon of some of the design ideas and the actual sets. I think that this one will be exciting to work on. I always think that, until the last few weeks of the shoot , when I wish that I could throw the script at the director's head and stay home and knit all day. But until then, I do really like my job.