More Test Footage

This week, the crew and I went down to location to figure out just where we were going to place lighting on our set. This visit was one of the most crucial moments of pre-production. The Gaffer, Sound Recordist, Assistant Director, and myself had taken loads of lighting equipment to set during our second visit. This visit definitely gave us some advantages.

The first advantage was that obviously, we were able to figure out how to light each room for every shot in advance. When we go to set on our shooting dates, there will now be no time wasted trying to figure out just how to light our project. We won't be referencing loose diagrams and fixing issues as we go, we will be ready and prepared to set up and get to that first shot in significantly less time.

The second advantage to our visit was that because we have fixed the various issues that come with lighting our particular set space, we will no longer have actors sitting around and waiting to be lit properly. When we can get in the zone and begin grabbing takes sooner, the talent is likely to give a better performance because he or she is not impatient and/or waiting around.

The third advantage to our visit was that we can give our editor something to work with that will get him prepared to handle the actual footage when it comes his way. He can play with various presets to get our footage looking much closer to what we desire when we have finished collecting it.

Finally, because we brought our Sound Recordist, we have some room tone to work with, featuring random creaks in the house, cars passing by, and at some points, rain falling outside and on windows. This will give both her and the editor a sense of what kind of sounds we should prepare to work around in our natural space, since we do not have total control of what's outside the set.

All in all, we came out with some footage that we were happy with, but it is also footage that we can now improve upon when it comes time to actually shoot this thing.

Prepping to Make a Horror Film: Insidious 2

Over the weekend, I mustered up the courage to watch Insidious: Chapter 2. I am not an avid horror fan. I'm not a fan of horror at all, actually. Usually I see a trailer and then make a snap decision which is, "Ha! I'm never watching that!"

I have not seen the first of the Insidious movies, but my roommate told me that I didn't have to. Insidious: Chapter 2 is very similar to the first movie and picks up right where the first one leaves off, so she gave me a brief summary.  The first two Insidious films are about the Lambert family, who are connected to the spirit world through one of the sons, Dalton, and his father, Josh. In the first film, Dalton  falls into a coma and is tormented by evil spirits in another realm called The Further. The family seeks the help of Elise Rainier to bring Dalton back to reality. At some point in the movie, Josh goes into The Further to bring Dalton back, but an evil spirit follows him out and continues to haunt the family throughout the second film.

There was a lot that was visually scary, but if I had watched the movie on mute, I'm sure I wouldn't have been as scared. The sound was so powerful. The score sounded like it had a lot of strings; I expected that. But I think what was most scary was the pairing of a quick, jarring sound with a striking or strange image.

This short scene is great for sound design analysis. Specs and Tucker, two ghost hunters, are in the house of Parker Crane, a man who died many years before that is connected to the Lambert family.

This scene is very short, but it's clear the sound sets up the audience to be spooked. The first line of dialogue, "Let's get out of here," is accompanied by silence. Then you hear the floor squeak for a second, until the sound grows and you realize it's coming from the rocking horses behind the guys. The rocking horses rock faster and faster until a little boy runs across the frame yelling "This is my room!" This is paired with a jarring, non-diegetic sound. These non-diegetic sounds inserted at key moments let the audience know what they should be scared of.

Another example of this is when Dalton recalls a dream he had the previous night. At 0:42, a strategic jump cut to a wider angle, coupled with the jarring sound and scary image of the woman in the white gown makes the audience jump. I hope to implement this strategic and classic horror ingredient in our film, Dollhouse.

Production Design in Narcos

This week I watched two episodes of Narcos, a Netflix original series. (I'm really bad at binge watching television.)

Narcos is about the most notorious drug dealer of all time, Pablo Escobar. Much of the story takes place in Colombia in the late 70s and early 80s, where Pablo and his team produce mountains upon mountains of cocaine to sell in other South American countries and the United States. ('narcos' = narcotics. If you didn't get that, it's cool--I didn't until at least halfway through the first episode). The story is told by Steve Murphy (played by Boyd Holbrook), a DEA agent who moves from Miami to Colombia to stop Escobar.

Pablo and his cocaine. Bffs 4 life.

Th production design in Narcos, as I would expect with any major drama series, was excellent. Scenes in episodes one and two take place in the middle of the jungle, a fancy Colombian hotel, a random street in South Beach, Miami, the airport, a plane, a bowling alley, and a ton of other places. There was so much effort put into every little detail--as it should be.

This has inspired me to get involved in this part of production for our project, which was recently retitled as Dollhouse. In class we talked about using our location to resemble a dollhouse, so I started to think about exactly what that means.

I may have had this exact dollhouse growing up, actually.

I played with dolls (Barbies, Polly Pockets, Bratz) all the time growing up. However, I think what makes dollhouses a little creepy is when all the furniture is glued down. Not all dollhouses are like this, but the ones for very young children are, so they can't pick up the tiny furniture and start eating it. Maybe glued down furniture is an element that we can play with. We want the dollhouse to reveal characteristics about our antagonist, Hannah, so very minimalist designs might be best. Perhaps we could have shots of her straightening or tidying things around the house as she talks to Vivian, our protagonist. Vivian's room, in contrast, will look like the "normal" college student's--pictures and posters on the walls, some laundry on the floor, homework sprawled across the desk.

Obviously, we don't have the money that Narcos did, but that doesn't mean we can't put a lot of effort into our production design.