Thesis shoot, pt. II

As I spoke about in previous posts, I did production design on the media thesis film for my dear friend. After 2 weeks of intense pre-production and two weekends of non stop filming, I AM DONE!!!!!
(and can now put my entire focus on this film). Since I did a recap for the first weekend on set, I thought I'd do another one as a more ~overall~ review for my role as production designer on set.

The first and second weekend's shoots were very different. Week one was a lot of set up at the beginning of the weekend and break down at the end, while this past weekend included multiple locations for a shorter amount of time, and less set dressing. Since I couldn't do as much set dressing (i.e. shooting in a catholic church did not allow for much drastic changes due to time) I had to get creative to get the character's color palates into the frame. For example, the father's main colors were black and red, but due to a last minute actor change the red shirt I had would not fit the actor. So I searched around the church and found some red prayer books to put in the pews. It's subtle, but it adds to the story. Take a look below:

I am really happy with how this shot looked, but at other times I felt that the DP&director didn't care about my efforts for the shot design. I was involved with checking the frame during the first weekend's shoot to make sure the proper colors were in there, but when the second weekend came around I backed off a bit, because I sick of them doing whatever the heck they wanted; them changing all their shot directions when I had planned for specific angles and shot compositions. (part of this was because neither of them had been to one of the locations so they were going in kind of blind???? This had to do with how fast pre-production went (hence why I was disintegrating every single day hahah) and the director being too busy to meet with us (grr).

I had many qualms with the film, but it honestly looks incredible. (even with a lack of planning in some parts) Overall, I learned a lot from the experience and it was a really fun set to be on. I know I could have done better work with a higher budget and more time, but I did what I could and it still looks good.