On The Set

Last night, the first day of a three-day DV shoot for a short-short piece by Daniel McKleinfeld. Quite fun, actually.

Three scenes, three locations (all in and around Daniel and Sally's home), one per day. Nice and leisurely, really.

I don't think I'm supposed to describe it in any detail, but it involves the cast and crew of a small, lousy little slasher movie behind the scenes on the set - so the photos of us behind the scenes aren't too different in some ways from what we were shooting. I was performing in the piece as the writer/director of the crappy movie and was also acting as what the Brits used to call (in one of my favorite now-obsolete job titles) "Lighting Cameraman" - that is, I lit the sets but didn't touch the camera at all except to check exposure.

Daniel asked for Cassavetes-realism for the scene of the crew talking about the film in the location's kitchen, so we lit it pretty much with practicals, with 250w bulbs in the fixtures, with a few 40w and 60w as fill light on faces here and there. We're shooting 24fps video, which requires light something like shooting 400 ASA 16mm movie film, to my eye - much more than the DV I've shot before. Looks lovely, though, the 24fps.

For the other two scenes, I have to light realistically again on the front stoop of the building at night - just pumping in more light to look like the real thing, with fill again - and I also get to light the scene from the film-within-the-video, in the basement, where I get to do deliberately bad, Friday the 13th/80s slasher movie lighting: general, low, unjustified midnight blue glow with impossible-in-reality slashes of green across it and silly patterns of red thrown against things. I enjoy imitating silly lighting - maybe 'cause I actually somewhat like the extremity of it sometimes and enjoy the chance to go overboard. And more so.

It was a fun group and a fun shoot. Here, Daniel watches his wife Sally throw blood on Jessi Gotta in her prom dress (she's the "victim" in the slasher film):

Jessi - who played the Ophelia-figure in my production of Havel's Temptation and Ophelia herself in Ian W. Hill's Hamlet - knows how to act in a bloody prom dress, going all coy:

Daniel (on camera) and Sally (on boom mic) set up the two shot of Danny Bowes (making, apparently, his film/video debut as the "Killer" in the slasher film) and Michele Schlossberg (as the production manager):

Daniel wasn't noticing where he was walking so much as he set up another shot, and kept walking further and further back into Michele's space, where she had tried to wedge herself out of the way. It was suggested that Michele treat the director as they like to be treated, and she obliged - Sally was amused, Daniel remained oblivious:

It took forever to get the right frame for this shot - Daniel looks for just the right place for the two-shot of Jessi and Josh (real-life gore makeup specialist playing it onscreen) as he applies latex to her neck:

Oh, great - I get to do the lighting I like at the end of the scene! My character, deranged, sees everyone in the room laughing at him in distorted, expressionistic shots. So we got to go for that Murnau-Last Laugh effect by having Daniel come in close and hand-held on everyone in the room one-by-one as I shook a 250w bulb in a cliplight at them from a short ways away - looked great through the lens, looked kinda silly on the set (Sally took this shot):

Leaving shortly for auditions for my own shows - back to the video shoot tomorrow and Thursday. More photos then.