Pre-production and test

Pre-production work carries on .
On Saturday JC, Azahara, who is doing the art direction, and I visited our Natalie location in Holloway Road.
JC has come up with a concept for shooting the whole feature. There is an evolution as we move through the film, to the end in Norway. The first segments uses a faster, grainier film, 250D and the Norway sequence uses a much slower 160T. So as the film breaks open we will have gone from a less detailed, noisier look to a much more detailed, higher contrast, richer look in Norway. This evolution is also carried over into the lenses, which start longer, and then go wider in Norway. We are playing with positioning, go from straight on views of locations and rooms, to diagonals. This first part we owe to Ozu I am sure.
So at the location JC had his camera, and Azahara acted as our model. We went and did a photo storyboard of the location. This way JC could check his focal length, and I could see the sequence of shots. Azahara meanwhile got an idea of the location and what we might have to bring there.
Meanwhile Robert, a friend of mine who is acting as production manager, location manager, assistant director and everything else you can think of, is busy with all the thankless bits behind the scenes, like sourcing insurance and hot food.
And there is more. Tonight, if the rain holds off, we are shooting a stock test. This is the scene where Natalie returns to ask Claire to take care of her flat and includes two shots, one to Natalie in the street, and the other with Claire in the doorway. I have already blogged about this previously and so tonight, or rather in a few days when we get the results back from iLab we will see how this stock looks.
And the Natalie location is set for shooting May 10-12th.
More later on pre-production which involves a lot of shopping...