Saturday 2nd April was our final day of shooting, and another stressful one! Millie had booked out a room in the Alfred Tennyson Building to act as the Interrogation Room. I was under the impression that a seminar room with plain white walls had been booked out, but when I arrived at set, I found out we were filming in a recording studio that had bright yellow walls. This proved a challenge! Due to the unexpected appearance of the setting, my camera and lighting set-up plans were rendered rather unhelpful – as well as the shot list I had created for these scenes following the test shoots. This delayed us greatly, which was not ideal considering the interrogation scenes comprised of a large number of shots and I needed to be at work for 3:30pm.
The tight schedule meant Javier and I needed to collaborate as best we could to come up with creative ideas that would increase the efficiency of the shoot and allow us to wrap on time. On top of this, we also had to shoot the scene in a way that did not show the yellow of the walls. This was quite difficult in terms of lighting the scene; we had to improvise and light the scene as though it would be edited in black and white – which had been previously discussed during test shoots - just in case the yellow could not concealed. Although wide shots were not a huge feature of the interrogation scenes from the onset, I decided to utilise a lot of close-ups and extreme close-up shots to hide the unideal setting, creating a claustrophobic, unforgiving setting. To achieve this tone, I used a pair of Dedolights to illuminate the actors’ faces, as well as an LED light as a top light (mounted on a C-Stand) – this also acted as the key light for the scene. We had originally planned to use a Rayzr Fresnel light as an unmotivated source to light the characters’ face, but Dedolights achieve a much more precise effect.
There were points throughout this shoot where I thought we would not be able to finish on time, but we managed! Despite the lack of time, we had for the interrogation scenes, I managed to shoot footage I am extremely proud of and that I think looks great. Ben McAfee, Producer of Burned Out, did come to help out on set as a runner for our last day of filming, which was incredibly helpful. That’s a wrap!
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