Day Two @ The Bunker (26/05/12)

This has certainly been the most physically taxing day, but also the creative day for me as a cinematographer with regards to lighting and even camera movement; for the first few hours of the day I was left to my own accord to try and light the crawlspace scene underneath the floor of the bunker. At first I started to try and light the crawlspace with just the one Dedo light, placing it further and further down the space trying to keep the lights out of shot, but whilst also trying to light the scene so that the texture of the walls and piping really came out well on camera; after a few different set ups I spoke with Joe who actually informed me that he imaged the scene to be very dark and high in contrast and suggested that we could disguise the Dedo lights as work lights that our character was using; with this I was then able to find the correct position for the lights that with our character almost being silhouetted by the Dedo's; I am really happy with this lighting as it was something that was part of my research that I was hoping to achieve, I think I've been able to capture something that really does look like a cross between Alien and Damnation.

The second part and probably one of the most technically challenging hurdles that we had to cover was the filming of this scene; this involved the Merlin Steadicam which for the opening of the shot, I would be underground in the crawlspace filming our actor and they have to follow him with the camera as he climbs out off the hatch into the hallway, at which point I would follow him to the hatch and pass the camera on the Merlin through a small space to Joe who would be on his roller-blades who would the film the rest of the scene which ended with him being pushed down the hallway as the actors runs away.

For this shot I would have to try and balance the Merlin whilst being crouched over in the crawlspace and tackling the issue of a breeze that kept drifting through this space, in order to be able to passing the Merlin up to Joe smoothly without risking knocking the Merlin out of balance I literally had to hold the grip with just my thumb and index finger so Joe would have enough of the grip to grab hold of during the change over as to not disturb the balance. I was given free reign to shoot the scene underneath anyway I wanted; so I tried to give the scene so creative camera movement to get the most out of the scene and adding my own horror twist on the shot, keeping the camera moving implying that voyeuristic style giving the audience a sense that our character is being watched, but then the moment he turns to face the camera I stopped dead transferring the full attention of the scene onto him as he climbs out of shot.

Still of early lighting test down in the crawlspace.

Still of where I'd placed the Dedo to achieve the shot above.

First lighting test with Dedo on right-hand side of shot (disguising as work light), with Joe standing in for our actor.

My next test with actor in shot; me and Joe both agreed that we needed another  Dedo to find the right style and it was just a matter then of adjusting the flood and strength of the Dedo's to get the desired creative visual style for this shot.