LADIES AND GENTLEMEN WEEK 5: OH YES!
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN – WEEK 4/5 DAILIES from Robin Schmidt on Vimeo.
Praise be, a good day, no, a very good day. After the debacle of the week five weekend that was only a day with everything going wrong we really needed this weekend to be a monster but things didn’t start too well with our gaffer finding paid work that took him off the shoot, and the permissions we needed to shoot in Soho for our grand finale being denied at the last minute… Nonetheless Saturday dawned bright and sunny, and since we were shooting in the park that meant the day began with a positive note at least, something we desperately needed. The park just makes for some beautiful shots but we kept to the shade using the light creeping through the trees to create texture on the actors faces and it was absolutely stunning on the 5D.
I know a lot of people who’ve really struggled with the Merlin but it’s one of those bits of kit that you need to dedicate time to getting to know. It’s not perfect by any stretch but then it only costs $800 and for me it’s been one of the best investments I’ve made.
Our mattebox and filters haven’t arrived from Redrock yet so we’re still leaning heavily on our Fader ND, another piece of kit that has been absolutely priceless these last few weeks. We just take a piece of camera tape and attach the filter with that as we don’t have any step-up rings for the filter. Bonkers! For the walking shots we had a giant square reflector placed just below the camera bouncing fill into the actors’ faces but we were also experiencing blown out hot spots as we hit areas where there wasn’t quite enough sunshine so our camera assistant had to walk along beside us with a piece of tree on a c-stand, filling in the holes as we walked. We looked like total clowns, but it worked!
Initially we were shooting on the Steadicam Merlin, a handheld stabiliser, with the 35mm f1.4 L, just a fantastic lens for the little handheld steadicam. I know a lot of people who’ve really struggled with the Merlin but it’s one of those bits of kit that you need to dedicate time to getting to know. It’s not perfect by any stretch but then it only costs $800 and for me it’s been one of the best investments I’ve made. Steadicam operators are like gold dust and it’s hard to get hold of any to work for free on low budget stuff. We are using one for the final weekend where we’re shooting a complicated opening sequence, but for the rest I’ve been planning shots on the Merlin because I feel confident of pulling them off. For events the Merlin is great because you can go wherever you like and keep the shot steady but you’re not really worried about stopping and starting too much. With drama it’s absolutely essential that you hit your marks, keep the shot framed perfectly and keep the perfect distance. You have no way of focussing the lens so you have to set your aperture to give you a workable focal range then do your damndest to work within it. We rigged the 5D with the 35mm and set it to f8 surprisingly. There’s no way of rigging a monitor on the Merlin as it just makes it way too top heavy so you’re working off the screen on the back, not the easiest! I’m the only one on set who can balance and operate the Merlin but I’m also the director so while I can get to the shot I want quicker I’m concentrating so hard on the technical challenges that it’s hard to be on top of the performances. We normally need about ten or eleven takes to nail it, but because the shot does so much work for you I find I’m cutting other setups as we just don’t need them. I’m particularly proud of the shot where the actor stands up, we spin around him and find the girls coming the other way before he walks off. On the Merlin that’s tough but I think it’s turned out great.
My last challenge of the day was my first ever sex scene. These things are hard to get your head round because I think we’ve all seen bad ones and I wanted to leave my mark on this particular challenge. Oh yes, did I mention it was a gay sex scene?
I had to let one of our actors go last week (I say I, it was actually the producers!) as he just wasn’t ready to deliver what we needed and we had a new actor come in to take his place. Wow. Our lead actor, Stephen, has really grown into his part over the last few weeks and is doing a brilliant job and Henry, our new actor came in and absolutely blew us away. The pair of them are dynamite and it’s incredible how much of a difference that makes on set. Instead of doing ten takes we do two and move on. You really feel it when the shoot kicks into gear, the shot’s looking great, the actors are on form and you’re cracking through setups. I love that. We often have several scenes in the same location, broken up by other scenes, so we have to cover them from the same setup. That means you’re jumping from scene to scene but staying in the same place and you have no continuity. That makes it really hard to ‘live’ in the scene and really examine what you’re getting critically. This weekend we had none of that, we had tons of variety and we were doing good work and we all knew it.
My last challenge of the day was my first ever sex scene. These things are hard to get your head round because I think we’ve all seen bad ones and I wanted to leave my mark on this particular challenge. Oh yes, did I mention it was a gay sex scene? Crikey. In the end I opted to make it non-explicit and concentrate on details that revealed the emotional state of the actors. Both of them are straight but they didn’t shy away from making it believable and it just fills me with total admiration how these guys can just get in that space, with tons of people watching them, surrounded by baking hot lights.
Watching back the rushes I’m still totally blown away by the 5D. I sit there, giggling like a little girl and patting myself on the back. It’s so sad, but for an indie filmmaker whose biggest challenge has always been trying to hide the budget somehow, this is so gratifying. I own a 7D and I’ve always found everything just not quite to my liking with it. The 5D is something else. I’ve been shooting stills on it as well recently and been even more blown away (how easy is it to forget that it’s primary purpose is photography?). The 7D is great, it’s accessible, it has the framerates, it has the movie button, but I don’t love it. I’m completely head over heels for the 5D. What a camera. This weekend we go live on uStream, giving people full access to the set over the internet. That’s a world first (I think!).
