Due to the time pressures of the original shoot day for these scenes, the footage needed to be reshot in order to improve both the visual quality and to improve the portrayal of the storyline.
The problems we encountered in the original shoot were:
- Our actor playing Sheila was only able to be with us until 12pm, meaning there was a lot of time pressure which caused the footage to look rushed (decreasing the effectiveness with which the storyline was portrayed whilst also decreasing the quality of the visuals as I was rushed in choosing the correct camera settings to use).
- The car park behind Sheila was busy which also added a time pressure to shooting her single closeup as cars behind Sheila began to exit the car park, meaning the continuity of the scene would have been affected if we didn't film this quickly.
- The weather was bright and sunny meaning that there was bright direct sunlight lighting the actors faces, causing quite harsh lighting conditions to work with.
This meant the things I learnt from the original shoot (and noted to rectify in the reshoot) were:
- Communicate with the producer to ensure the cast will be available for the entire call time. This reduced the time pressure of the shoot, enabling me to frame up and expose the footage correctly. This reduction in time pressure also allowed time to wait for activity in the background of shots to calm down in order to ensure continuity throughout the scene.
- Although myself and the producer did check the weather for the initial shoot, we didn't expect the bright sunlight to have such an impact on the footage as it did. Therefore, it was important (when shooting in this location) to ensure the weather would be slightly more overcast. I checked the weather before the shoot which showed the weather to be expected to be cloudy with a temperature of 12ºC - giving a much more ideal environment for filming.
- Due to the lack of time restriction, we were able to wait for the carpark behind where Sheila's closeup single was shot to be virtually empty which reduced the likelihood of background activity which would interfere with the shot.
The Shoot
The first scene we shot was scene 4 - this is because the scene involves the character Tim getting sprayed with blood which remains on the character for the remainder of the scene and for scene 6.
In the original shoot we didn't shoot the scene chronologically because of the little time we had with our actor playing Sheila (we needed to shoot the parts of the scene with her first) - however, this made the shoot more complicated and as a result the footage looked rough, rushed and poor quality. To rectify this, we decided to shoot the scene in chronological order to reduce the complications we experienced in the initial shoot as we had no time restrictions on this shoot.
I filmed the same shots as I filmed for the original shoot (but exposed and framed better) plus three extra shots to give us more coverage to work with in the edit. The extra shots included; a closeup single of Tim in the van during the dialogue prior to the surgery section of the scene, a medium closeup single of Luke at the back of the van during the same section of dialogue and a long shot of Sheila searching for Sooty before she walks over to the van. The additional coverage of Tim and Luke allows the dialogue prior to the surgery to be faster paced and adds to the urgency of the situation whilst the additional coverage of Sheila helps to build the narrative on her part more (before this shot was included, it seemed that Sheila appeared from nowhere when she approaches Tim and Luke, however, this shot helps to establish that Sheila had already been searching for Sooty when she stumbles upon the men and the van).
When we arrived and for the first couple of hours of filming, the location was relatively empty meaning that continuity between the shots could be ensured. However, after the first couple of hours of shooting, cars began to arrive for a meeting in the church hall. As we had no time restrictions for this shoot, we were able to break for lunch while the location cleared again - this allowed for the continuity of the scene to be retained.
As well as being a little overexposed, some of the footage from the original shoot was slightly soft in focus. This was due to the fact the bright sun made it very difficult to see the LCD screen and determine whether the footage was in focus or not. To ensure this wouldn't be an issue again, I used the focus assist tool which outlines all elements in focus in red - this meant I could clearly see which parts of the frame were in focus to prevent softly focused images.
As with the other shoot days, I based the settings on those used on the test shoots I performed with the Panasonic and then adapted them accordingly for the location. As ISO 500 appeared to be the best ISO to use throughout the test shoots, I decided to use this ISO for all the footage and just adapt the aperture, shutter speed and ND filter to adjust the exposure of the footage.
The settings I used ranged from an aperture of F/7.4 to F/6.3, a shutter speed of 1/50 to 1/48 and from no ND filter to ND filter 1/16. This all depended on where the actors were positioned within the scene and how this affected the light falling on them. I typically used an ND filter of 1/4 during this scene as a lot of it was either filmed outside or facing outside which meant there was a lot of natural light entering the scene. As it is recommended that you do not use an aperture higher than F/10 with this camera to avoid a slightly blurred appearance, I used ND filters instead to reduce the exposure of the shot. I also did not want to choose a shutter speed that was too fast as I wanted a natural motion blur that would be consistent with the rest of the scenes within the project. On the closeups of Tim putting on the latex gloves and prepping the other equipment for surgery I did not use an ND filter as this was all filmed within the van which blocked a lot of the natural light from entering the shot - therefore, an ND filter would have meant the shot would have been incorrectly exposed resulting in a shot that was too dark. In the sections of the scene where the characters were positioned against the bright sky (as opposed to being positioned against the trees and woodlands), I used an ND filter of 1/16 as the sky appeared overexposed otherwise. Below I have shown the different settings used for the variety of different shots I captured. These settings allowed for the subjects to be correctly exposed where you can differentiate between the shadows, highlights and midtones of the footage - this produces a visually better quality image which also gives the best scope for colour grading. The correct exposure of the images allows for all the detail within the footage to be seen - if it were over or under exposed, detail would be missing from the highlights or shadows of the footage, however, these correctly exposed images retain the detail in all these areas.
Scene 6 was a quicker scene to film as this only required capturing three shots (originally, I had planned to shoot this scene in one continuous shot, however, to make the pace of the piece faster, I captured two additional shots to insert in the edit).
To capture this scene, the director directed it the same way as before - this meant I could shoot the continuous panning shot in the same way as I filmed it in the original shoot. We did make a slight change to this shot as we changed the position of the sleeping cat to be under a car rather than by the gate - this was to make my camera movement smoother as I could just pan in one direction rather than having to pan back to reveal the cat - this made the shot look smoother and more polished, whereas, the original shot looked a little clunky. The distance at which the cat was placed was a similar distance between myself and the van - this meant I could use the same focus when pointing at the van and when pointing at the cat - this also helped to make the camera movement more smooth as I only had to pan and zoom rather than pan, zoom and re-focus.
The settings I used kept the ISO at 500, an aperture ranging between F/6.7 and F/6.4, a shutter speed of 1/50 and ranging between using no ND filter and an ND filter of 1/4. I used an ND filter of 1/4 for the exterior shot to avoid the footage appearing overexposed, I removed this ND filter for the interior shot as this made the footage too dark and underexposed. However, I did change the aperture to F/6.4 as keeping it at F/6.7 still had the issue of appearing too dark - therefore, this wider aperture allowed more light into the lens, increasing the exposure. These settings produced footage that appeared correctly exposed which will allow me to manipulate the footage more accurately in the post production and colour grading process.
I used no additional lighting for either of the scenes. I had planned to use a reflector to supplement the natural light coming from the north east facing direction, however, due to the overcast weather, this made very little difference to the look of the shot as there was not a lot of strong light to bounce back onto the actors. Therefore, I decided against using the reflector as it is a big piece of kit which could potentially interfere with the shots (i.e. be seen in the reflection of the van or dip into frame).
What went well
- Due to the weather being more overcast, the visual quality of the footage greatly improved as this eliminated the harsh lights and shadows that fell on the actors faces in the original footage. This will allow for a better colour grade as there is a lower contrast on the footage - allowing for more manipulation of the shadows, highlights, midtones and the colours within these areas of the image. In order to test how well the footage would colour grade before taking over with the fine cut of the edit, I graded stills from the footage to see how much scope I would have with the grade. I graded a still from the original footage and from the reshot footage to show the improvement reshooting the scene has made to the colour grading process. In order to keep with the natural yet cinematic look I tested in the pre-production unit, I graded the footage using an orange and teal LUT which added teal to the shadows of the footage and orange to the highlights. I reduced the intensity of the LUT to 28.4% in order to retain a natural element to the footage whilst making it look slightly more cinematic. I used the same grade on both the original and the re shot footage to show how much more scope reshooting has given the colour grading process. As shown below, the strong sunlight washes out Sheila (despite the use of an ND filter 1/16) which makes the footage appear overexposed. This meant that a lot of detail within the shot has been lost due to this overexposure, making it difficult to grade the highlights, shadows and midtones separately (all of these elements begin to merge into one). In the re shot footage, Sheila is correctly exposed - allowing the highlights, shadows and midtones of the footage to be manipulated more accurately to get the desired result. The difference between the same colour grade on the original and the reshot footage can be seen below.
- Due to less time pressure, we were able to wait for the car park behind Sheila to be virtually empty before shooting the scene. The original footage had a car reversing behind Sheila during her single medium closeup / closeup shot, making this a distraction to the delivery of her dialogue as the audience may be distracted by this instead of focusing on the dialogue being delivered by the actor. As we were under less time pressure on this re shoot, we were able to break whilst the car park emptied and shoot when there was very little movement occurring behind the actor - making the core focus of the scene Sheila and her dialogue - this allows the humour within this scene to properly be portrayed without the distraction of background movement.
- In the original shoot, the character Tim touches the character Sheila's left shoulder with his bloody hand, however, because of the angle I was filming from, the subsequent bloody hand print was not too apparent in the footage. This was an issue for the director to rectify - he directed Tim to touch Sheila's right shoulder instead in the re shoot so that I could capture this action more effectively. I also decided to re frame this single slightly so that the handprint would be more obvious to the audience in order to ensure the comedy of this action was delivered as effectively as possible - something which was missing from the original shoot.
- Following communication with the director and producer / co editor of the project regarding the rough cut - we decided more coverage would be needed for the beginning of scene 4. Originally, in my shot list and the original shoot, I used a continuous panning shot to capture the action prior to the surgery section of the scene. I felt that this worked well, however, it felt a little dragged out in the edit as the actors had to wait for the camera to pan back to them before they delivered the dialogue. Instead, I decided to still capture this shot in the re shoot but to also capture a medium closeup single of Luke and a closeup of Tim that could be used to make this scene tighter in the edit. Furthermore, in the panning shot in the original shoot, I was unable to do the minor zooms used throughout the rest of the film as this would have altered the frame size to be the same for both Tim and Luke (which worked when zooming slightly in to Luke due to being positioned further away from this actor, however, it made the shot too tight on Tim due to being positioned closer to this actor). Therefore, by filming a single of each of these characters for this section of the scene, I was able to use minor zooms like those I have been using throughout the rest of the filming - contributing to the continuity between the scenes.
- Part of the feedback from Simon in the rough cut viewings was that the scenes involving the van driving away need to be sped up and moved along as they slow the narrative down. To do this, I decided to capture more footage of scene 6 to break up the long continuous panning shot that I originally shot of the scene. The additional footage I shot included a closeup single of Tim in the van and a closeup single of Luke in the van - these can be inserted in the edit after the characters enter the vehicle to make the scene faster paced before cutting back to the van driving away and zooming in to reveal the cat. This was a success of the re shoot as it means we have more coverage to work with in the edit which will enable us to rectify problems that have been flagged in the rough cut reviews.
What didn't go well
- Ideally I would have liked to film another take of Sheila's closeup single due to the first bit being slightly overexposed (however, this is rectifiable unlike the overexposure from the original footage). The reason this could not be re filmed was that another car had arrived in the car park behind Sheila which would have meant multiple other shots would have also had to be re filmed (which would have still carried the same risk of more cars arriving and disrupting the continuity of the scene). Therefore, I decided not to shoot another take of this and instead rectify the exposure in post production. I reduced the highlights of the footage to -22, the midtones to -16, the shadows to -20 and the overall exposure to +9 and added the LUT I used on the earlier stills (an orange and teal LUT at intensity 28.4%) to produce the graded version of the footage as shown below.
- In the wide three shot of Luke, Tim and Sheila, you can see that there is no dog in the van where Tim was performing the surgery. This is due to the positioning of the characters as previously Tim was stood in a way that obscured the open door of the van, however, in the reshot footage, Tim is stood slightly more forward so it is apparent there is no dog in the van. Although, this is rectifiable due to the amount of coverage I captured of this scene. Instead of using this wide three shot, we can use the medium two shot of Tim and Luke and Sheila's closeup single to portray the action within this scene rather than using the wide three shot. This means that you can no longer see that there is no dog in the van.
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