POST 13 - Filming Reflection

The filming took place in Louis's dad's warehouse. I was looking for an abandoned warehouse, but finding a studio is way too expensive for us. Shooting in the live-action studio costs around 1000 RMB for one hour, roughly equivalent to 3 days of free McDonald's Big Mac combo or a pretty new Nikon OC 50mm 2.8 medium format lens for my Bronica S.

The warehouse was just what I was looking for, perfect. So we spent all of our budget on props. I bought 10 liters of fake blood, which is probably like 200 RMB; Two water tanks, around 20 RMB; and A kid's tricycle, which almost got Louis handicapped and cost me 67 RMB. Danny purchased a Biochemical suit, a gas mask, three raincoats, and a bag of Durex Pleasure Max condoms for no reason, and somehow, we actually managed to put it into the video. (Oh boys)

Regarding the lighting, We brought six lights, two 48w facial panels, two small light boxes, and two 5500k light bulbs with softboxes but ended up shooting everything with the 48w facial panel. That would be much easier if we had a 300w COB light. Most of the time, I needed to place two of the facial panels together to get a 96w light source, but I struggled to create moody shadows on the character's face because the panel produces soft light rather than harsh light that spotlighting a COB can create.

We struggle with carrying all the stuff into the warehouse, considering the abandoned part of the warehouse is crowded with furniture, and it's hard to find a way to move things; that is why a lot of the shots were so much different from my planing since we had too little forces to accomplish the plan. I am also the kind of photographer who does not like to follow plans when composing stuff.

Danny was the guy responsible for painting Louis into a clown, and I was the laborer carrying around stuff and getting myself killed from all of the traps in the abandoned warehouse. I also did the filming since I'm the only guy in the group who knows how to operate a camera.

The photography only took six hours to complete within two days. On the first day, we shot A roll of Louis singing, a bit of B roll with Louis going wild, and 10 minutes of Louis playing with condoms. On the second day, we shot the table scene of Louis with the blood scene and another 10 minutes of Louis blowing balloons with condoms. The makeup painting took around 2 hours, and setting up took around 2 hours, so the footage took only 2 hours.

I am satisfied with the footage's qualities overall. I might need to use a gimbal on some shots since they are pretty shaky hand-held. Besides toning and some other simple VFX doubling, I avoid using too many visual effects, which can distract the audience from the footage.

We did a hell of a lot of improvisation with the B roll since I could not predict what it would look like before arriving at the place (So maybe I need to gather information first before shooting). In our plan, we had a shot of Louis twisting on the mirror with a lot of blood. The blood we had was so poorly manufactured that it dyed our skin, so I dared not get blood on Louis' face and eventually abandoned the shot.

Overall, I would say the filming was okay but we really feel like we need more people at the filming that would make our life so much easier. I also found the footage a bit less than I expected, making the editing part pretty hard to deal with. We were trying to create a psychedelic atmosphere, meaning the footage is non-logical. I found it hard to deal with editing logic in post-production, and many of the cuttings are a bit sticking out and weird.