It’s been a pretty crazy few weeks for me and the only reason I managed to keep posting new shots on my glass eye was by posting about 10 days worth in advance, set to auto-update, before I went away! I hope you’ve been enjoying them, and with any luck I should be able to start regular photoblog updates again soon, with some really nice photos of the snow out in Somerset.
I managed to miss pretty much all the snow-related chaos in London, though! When the major snowfall happened I was out in Somerset at Shapwick House shooting the publicity and production stills on a feature length movie called Vivid – which you may or may not have seen me Twittering about if you follow my feed.
The film shot in 3 major locations – central London, Shapwick House, and wrapping with 3 days in Black Park out in Slough (near Uxbridge), where the snow gave the scenes there a fantastic look and feel that the director hadn’t anticipated but was very pleased with – my new wellies and Dickies winter jacket came in very useful indeed.
The film was written and directed by Reg Traviss based on a story called ‘Dreamhouse’ by Michael Armstrong, and stars Charisma Carpenter as an American novelist who moves to a country house in Somerset with her new husband, Paul Sculfor. Unfortunately she’s subsequently haunted by horrific visions of a massacre that took place in the house, and of course nobody else believes her…
That’s not Charisma over there on the right, by the way – I’ve agreed not to publish images of Charisma or Paul in their scenes until the production company are ready to start publicising the film themselves. Pictured are Katrina Rochell (on the phone) and Helena Linder, in a scene we shot in The Electric Birdcage in Haymarket, London.
Shooting stills for a film is very different from other forms of photography – for one thing, you have to keep reminding yourself that hierarchically speaking you’re at the bottom of the ladder, the least important camera in the room. Obviously the production publicist holds your work in high regard because without crisp images of the action they have nothing with which to publicise the film, decorate the DVD box and so on, but if you’re getting in the way of the camera team or putting off the actors, you’re off the set. In fact, often you might be asked to leave the set regardless of your professionalism, simply because an actor would prefer to do an emotionally demanding scene with as few extraneous eyes on him or her as possible, which is both understandable and extremely frustrating, but you just have to accept it and chalk up some downtime to go through your other shots from the day.
Therefore, while you might think the best shots are going to be had from as close to the camera as possible, the framing of a ‘movie’ shot isn’t necessarily what works best in a still. Obviously a lot of the time the very best angle has indeed been nabbed by the peskily talented eye of the director, or the Director of Photography (DP), and in those cases I try to get as close as I can without disturbing any of the essential camera crew – and they are numerous!
For example, in the image to the left we have the bare minimum you can expect to find by the camera – the focus puller (in the background, Steven Gardner, using a remote focus control), the DP, Brian Loftus, and Reg, the director (who was meticulously turned out each and every day of the shoot, his perfectly set quiff becoming a motif for the entire production).
In addition to these people you might also find a camera operator (if the DP isn’t taking those reins himself) and a clapper loader – who contrary to the implication of his name isn’t a chap that marches around a set loading claps, but rather operates the clapper board at the start of a take (for sound sync and to identify the scene and take numbers when it comes to editing the film) as well as the loading and unloading of the actual negative film into the cassettes that attach to the back of the camera. So technically it should be ‘clapper/loader’ but I suppose the slash got lost over the years!
The next two shots are good examples of when I both was and wasn’t able to get close to the camera. For the scene depicted on the right the movie camera was about 2 feet above my head, mounted on a tripod on the landing at the top of a flight of stairs, looking down the corridor a few feet to a bathroom where a victim of ‘The Maniac’ was being mercilessly slayed in a bath (easier to wash the blood away, right?). On one side of the camera were the stairs, on the other were the DP, focus puller, members of the art department ready to rush in and adjust the blood on the knife, members of the lighting department ready to dash in and adjust the lights tucked out of vision behind the bathroom door, and of course the DP and director.
Not much room for (not so) little old me, then! Or… was there?
As this was pretty much the best position to see the action (putting aside for the moment the fact that it was the only position!) I got down and arranged myself oh so carefully so I was lying on the stairs themselves, my head at ground level where the tripod was, my lens peeking through the tripod legs with just enough room that I could get my eye to the viewfinder. Nobody said anything during rehearsals so I risked cramps, held my position and squeezed off a bunch of shots during the takes – which brings me to another point about the framing of stills shots – they don’t need to match the angle the camera is filming at.
This sort of angle is often called ‘Dutching the camera’ and you’ll see it in lots of films, usually when something dramatic is happening, but throughout Vivid the camera is pretty much locked level. On the other hand, I found the Dutched angle gave the still shots an energy and mood that matched the action perfectly, much more so than a level shot would have done. I’ve found that tilting my camera down on the side that the actor is looking or moving works best, giving a directional energy that is otherwise lost in a still.
On the other hand, here’s an example of when being by the camera was going to suck. The position of the camera was tight in the corner with lamps all around. The actress was sitting at a table in front of a window, with the film camera a few feet to her right. The 1st AD didn’t want anyone in the actress’ eyeline and as she was to turn around and look straight past the film camera, she would have been looking directly at me – so I took up a different position directly behind her (if I were to pan this shot to the left, you’d see her).
I metered off her face in rehearsals so that I wasn’t going to get a fantastic shot of the fields outside and black sillhouette of her profile, and when the time came got a great shot of her turning over her shoulder to look in fear into the space between my lens and Brian’s. It was perfectly framed with the window in the background, the wooden bars between the panes of glass nicely defocussed, and her fear-stricken face sharply in focus as she twisted over her shoulder. If I could show you, I would! (Perhaps I’ll update the post once the film has been released…)
Well that’s enough for today, I think! I have a few more images I’d like to share, including some shots of the great location we were at and some more behind-the-scenes shots, but tonight we’ve got the wrap party (celebratory “We Didn’t Freeze To Death” drinks, in other words!) and I haven’t done much of the housework I promised myself I’d get on with… 😉
