Blog Archives

Test Shoot - Creating Noir

30/9/2013

The key aesthetic aspect of The Alpha Invention which I repeat to the crew just as much as I repeat on this blog is the shards of light coming through the Venetian blinds. It immediately signals the genre to an audience and cues expectations of the story (which we can play with!).

Therefore, I wanted to ensure that we can achieve a suitably noiry look ahead of time - when we get to set it's vital that every moment possible is spent capturing footage, time can't be wasted testing out different gels on the lights or smoke intensities - so Michael and I went about finding a place to perform a test shoot.

We eventually found a ground floor apartment where we could set up a single key light outside. Once that was done we ignited a single smoke pellet which I bought from a local DIY shop. You can see the results below.

CTB gels.

This is no where near a "final look", it simply allowed us to experiment with different aperture and ISO settings and confirm that we definitely can see those shards of light.

We started bright for the first take as that is when there was the most smoke in the room. You can see the shards but there's not a lot of contrast in the image, everywhere is well lit, and those who know their noir will tell you that you need areas of the image that are as dark as possible juxtaposed with those which are well lit.

For the next take we altered the ISO setting and now you can see those areas of black, however, it's still not quite right. It's only in the last take that the camera settings and the gels have a hit a sweet spot. The table surface is not too bright and there are long shadows being cast onto the floor. Either side of the frame the blacks are now contrasting very well with the centrally lit areas. The only thing lacking in this shot is the smoke, which has dispersed quite a lot by this time. On shoot day we will take the set up of shot 4 with the smoke intensity of shot 2.

You may also notice that the last two takes are actually bluer. This is due to us placing CTB gels over the light outside. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, CTB gels are, for all intents and purposes, sheets which alter the colour temperature of the light. We upped the amount of CTB used until we found a look that was near enough to the colour conveyed in the concept art.

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Storyboarding

23/9/2013

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Look at his face! He’s bloody petrified! That’s because he had to spend hour upon hour with me as his omnipotent god in FrameForge 3, a piece of software I would highly recommend to any filmmakers out there who, like me, struggle to draw curtains and a bath let alone 48 different shots.

Last week I did a blog on art direction and mentioned that I'd storyboarded the entire movie from beginning to end. Well, this is what I used to create it. Designing a virtual model of Guy's apartment was easy peasy - you don’t have to be a CAD engineer to do it - and then positioning the camera around that environment is quick.

I’ve also exported this storyboard, along with shot notes and headings as HTML files which I’m uploading to the web so all cast & crew can access them any time of the day if they need to revise how things are happening on shoot day. It's "in the cloud", as they say.

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Art Direction - Creating a Space

16/9/2013

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A few weeks back Michael (Producer/DP) and I met with Anna Page, who is our Art Director, to discuss the look of the environment that The Alpha Invention is to take place in.

It is a single-location film so there is only one look and design to be considered - Guy's apartment - however, ten to fifteen minutes in one location means that virtually every square centimetre is going to appear on screen at some point or another. In fact, Michael and I have gone through and storyboarded the entire film from start to finish to examine the precise details of what does end up in the lens. The above is true, every wall, prop and corner ends up on screen.

It would make sense then that we found a location, a real apartment, to suit our needs. But with the camera needing to be in so many places, real walls that you can't remove start to become a problem. Add a few other nuisance requirements such as it needing to be specifically a ground floor apartment with sash windows (so that we can set up lights outside to stream through those Venetian blinds) and it started to become apparent that this is a location which needs to be built from scratch.

That's where Anna comes in. She designs a fake apartment, which will be built in a studio, and makes it look like a real one! I gave her a 3D design of the room which I'd created in Google SketchUp (left) and a list of props - blinds, a rotary dial black telephone, notepad and so on. Anna will then source these as well as working with Michael to ensure the minutia do not clash - for example, that the colours of the wall will not cause any problems on camera or that the blinds are just the right width to create the shards of light we need (advance warning: you'll most likely be hearing a lot about Venetian blinds - very important for film noir atmosphere!).

With all these designs in the bag there will of course come a time to build it all. But that comes later! There's a lot to do before that...

You can follow Anna on twitter @annapiaggio.

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The Producers

9/9/2013

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When you've finished writing a screenplay and you're happy with the current draft the next stage is obvious - you need to make it into a film.

This is daunting. Even on a short film like The Alpha Invention, once you've read the script from a production point of view and identified the amount of hurdles and challenges that lie ahead the first thing you realise is that you need help. Moreover, you need extremely reliable and highly skilled help.

I am therefore very fortunate that I met Michael Spry. I'd placed an ad on shootingpeople.org for a Producer and out of the applicants Michael seemed the most genuinely interested in the project and the most capable. He is primarily a Director of Photography but from the very first meeting I knew he was my producing partner, the reason being (apart from that he has indeed produced projects before) is that Producers simply need to be problem solvers. That is what they are, the Mr. Wolfe's of the filmmaking business.

They look at your script and analyse challenges that you maybe haven't foreseen and then, crucially, brainstorm with you solutions in order to overcome them - is this something we can shoot on location or do we need a studio? Do we need extra space on one side of the studio to place lights at a distance in order to create defined shadows of the Venetian blinds? If the set has wooden floorboards then smooth dolly shots are going to be a problem, however if we cut the floor into four quadrants we can take one of them out and run the dolly over the studio floor.

Producers also help you schedule the shoot and the added bonus is with Michael being our DP he can say with a lot of confidence how long each setup will take and the equipment and budget required. The communication between camera department and the Producer is removed, saving time, miscommunication and money. It's a great combination.

You can see some of Michael's previous work at michaelspry.com and follow him on twitter @michael_spry.

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