Last weekend was the shooting weekend and I took the opportunity to experiment with the shooting style.
I chose a scene from the revised outline when Sophie returns from her night excursion. The night before, in the middle of a discussion with Paul about how they met, Sophie disappears. She goes out into the night, and discover a parallel world (London at night). It is really about her overcoming fear and reaffirming her belief in chance.
Now that it is morning she returns to Paul. She wants to explain, but Paul is too angry to listen to her.While Paul understood that their marriage is over, he did not expect it to end this way. It is almost that she had an affair over the course of the night. She has betrayed their intimacy.
I had intended this scene to happen in Paul's office, but we had to take what was given to us, which was a Victorian house.
Paul enters the room and we decided (we being Todd, acting as my DOP) he would sit down. He is distraught but his way to deal with it is to pretend to be in control. He of course betrays himself several times in speech. The camera would look down on him, so that we could express his lack of status.
Sopie follows him, but though she has been here innumerable times before this morning she doesn't feel welcome. She hovers in the doorway, in the centre of frame, at a distance. We don't come any closer, as if we could not know what is happening with her any more than Paul. She is in the centre of the frame as if she didn't need anyone. And the camera looks up to her. Her status is higher than Pauls.
Our reverse is a close-up of Paul - we do know what is happening with Paul as he does most of the talking - and he is frame-right, with a void frame-left. As if he were expecting Sophie to fill that empty space.
At least that was the plan. But as we were rushed (when aren't you rushed on a film set?) we made mistakes. We shot Sophie first, and had Paul feed her his lines off-camera. But we forgot to have him sit down, so her eye-line was level to him, instead of looking down to him if were seated. To match the reverse we had to Paul standing as well. We missed out being able to use camera angle to express status in the scene.
The film is currently in the lab. Next week we will be editing, and I will post some images.
Thank you to my friends Ant and Mansi for coming out on a Saturday afternoon to act for me. And Todd Pacey my DOP, and everyone else in the class.
No comments:
Post a Comment