Musings of an Idiot

Weekend-4 of '5'

Crazy weekend....in every sense of the way. This was supposed to be our last weekend of filming. In between the last weekend and this, the climax of cycle-1 was re-analyzed and re-written, in order to keep the structure of the movie intact while building on the tension within the storyline that we had filmed up to that point. David M. did a quick writeup of the climax which we then tweaked as we started filming.

Each weekend has been special and challenging but this one was by far the toughest one and definitely one of the most satisfying ones. We started off late on Saturday afternoon since the plan was to do night shoot for the climax of act-1. We got to the location at 1.30 in the afternoon and took a good hours break before we started filming the climax of act-2. It started shaping up really nicely and by the time we were hitting the stride with it we were into the late hours of the evening. So we took a dinner break and started preparing for the night shoot.




In between all this we had 3 trampers (NZ term for 'hikers') came to the hut and were wondering what we were doing there since they had paid to stay there the night. We compared papers and found that even though our production had booked out the hut for all the weekends in November for filming, someone had made the mistake and double booked it for that night. Luckily the main guy in the other group also worked in the film industry and understood what we were doing and compromised on the whole thing - he put up his tent behind the hut, so they wouldn't get in our way. It was a really sweet thing to do and then they put up with our screaming and yelling which went into the early hours of Sunday.

Talking of the night shoot - one of the most challenging things with this entire production has been that the location does not have any electricity or running water or anything 'normal' you can imagine. Carrying a generator for an hour through a muddy and uneven track into the woods isn't exactly a feasible solution, especially when we are also carrying our costumes, our bedding and our food supply for the weekend. So the solution to that was that I rented out extra camera batteries for both the cameras and David M. would trek in every Saturday evening, recharge them overnight and deliver them to us the next day morning, so we could keep shooting through Sunday. And for the girls makeup needs - Mike helped us out with a portable alternator, which would power up their hair straightener so they could use to straighten their hair up for continuity purposes. So in this scenario going into a night shoot was a small nightmare as we had no lights or light sources bright enough to light up the scene in anyway whatsoever. Benji and me did a quick lighting test earlier in the week and found that we needed lots of light to make the night shots work. Solution - Lance, Benji and me went and bought heaps of candles and I also bought 2 gas lanterns which put out an equivalent of 75W house bulb each and also borrowed another gas lantern from James. This was our lighting equipment and the three of us were very apprehensive of it would shape up. But on Saturday night thanks to Lance, Benji and Mike - things worked out really well in terms of getting the lighting right. We ended up using a little bit of gain on the camera but overall that entire set of scenes look really nice with some great mood lighting.


Hats off to the cast and crew, who kept their focus and went through till 3.00 in the morning - which is when we completed the night shoot. A really satisfying shoot in the end. We didn't see or hear any rats through the shoot, which I reckon is because of all the light that was there in the hut (but I think Benji had a really close encounter with one of them when he went to sleep later that morning).

Sunday morning was a late start for everyone and the idea was to try and finish the rest of the scenes for the weekend. I woke up at 7.15 AM (after going to bed around 3.30 AM) because of my internal body clock and I just couldn't go back to sleep afterwards. So I sat on the porch and enjoyed the beautiful and melodious morning in the woods. It is amazing the different kinds of sounds you can hear out there. We started off filming on Sunday around 11.00 AM and it was another fantastic day of filming. Perfectly overcast sky for most of the day. We stopped filming around 4.30 PM since we knew that we couldn't get through the remaining 5 pages of the script in one and half hours. It definitely was the right decision as it had been a really taxing weekend for everyone and those last 5 pages we want to film were emotionally intense scenes and also has a lot of action happening within it - so left it for another day. How I co-ordinate that day now is a different matter altogether but overall everyone was pretty happy with what we have achieved in this short amount of time and no one seemed to mind the cuts we received from cutty grass (which has sharp edged blades) while filming.


Overall - now we have finished shooting 92% of the movie and have about 6 pages left to film and I am pretty damn excited about the movie. I keep saying this but I think I really am lucky to have been working with such a fine group of people - the cast, the crew and the people behind the movie - who have made this experiment possible. Plus the weather Gods have favored us for better part of the shoot and it has been monumental in making the movie happen.

I have almost recovered from my sniffling and sneezing which usually happens because of spending the weekend at the hut. Now it is time for me start digitizing the footage and start thinking of the edit work flow and processes. I will take leave for now.

Till later,
Amit

Labels: Filming, Five

posted by Amit @ 10:26 PM