Studio Shoot - Building The Set and Lighting

To build the set we required 2 walls (one with a hole in the middle, being the scene where the character breaks through it with text books, the other will be the backside of Group A's set) , we used five walls (3 drilled together and 2 on either side for support). The centre wall requires a hole which will be covered with material for the breakthrough scene.

We tested the lighting in some of the scenes which relates back to my research, where we tried to get a dark, shadowy effect in order to create a contrast to the bright, vibrant second scene.

Pictures by Charlie Whitworth (Cinematographer)

As shown in the above pictures (Taken by Charlie), we tried some methods to create an eery style of lighting for the set. We decided that there will be two lights, one coming from the outside of the cell into the room, and the other being the light from the ceiling of the cell. Therefore, we experimented to try and create something that would balance out for the filming of the scene. On the left of the images, the subject looked too bright, allowing for the scene to be less eery, therefore we tried to correct this by lowering both lights (Above centre) but allowing the ceiling light to be brighter that the outside light but slightly behind the subject. This gave a nice glow on the top of the subject (similar to the Bronson still from my lighting research) with the facial features slightly visible but not too pungent. The biggest challenge of creating the lighting for this scene is to make the right balance between the subject and the set around it (Bottom Centre). Although the lighting here was somewhat okay for the camera, it looked more like a Stage Play than a short film. Finally we tried to create a darker atmosphere by switching off the outside light and lowering the ceiling light until all we could see was the outline of the subject. Despite looking good on set, on camera it came out too dark, making it unclear on what the set looks like to the audience.

We sanded down the section of the wall which had bits of plaster attached to them giving it a smoother edge, however we ended up taking down the wallpaper any as there were bits missing from the wall which would create a dent whilst putting the new wallpaper over it.

In order to clear the walls, we needed to remove all the wallpaper from it, therefore all of us peeled it off using our hands or a wall scraper with warm water allowing it to peel off easily. It was also important to remove any extra nails that were sticking out of the walls by using a hammer and pulling them off individually.