I was really passionate about the scene that I chose to shoot, but I kinda
underestimated how difficult it would be to shoot with 7 actors. On set, I found it hard to give direction
because there were so many actors, and many of the parts only had a few lines,
yet required that all of the actors remained focused and present throughout the
entire scene. In retrospect, I should have picked a scene with fewer actor. I
did like the actors I was working with, however, and they were all very patient
and took direction well.
My biggest failure with this project
was with how we continually crossed the 180 line and how the eye line was so
inconsistent. Anna and I considered this on set, but it wasn’t until I edited
the film that I realized how bad the problem was. I realized that this came
about because I had two conflicting visual ideas in my head: first, I wanted
the main character, Marty, to be in the middle of the master shot with everyone
facing him. Second, I wanted the rest of the coverage to be shot as though it
was from Marty’s point of view. Of course, by doing this, we crossed the line
many times, and because of this, the film doesn’t edit together well. If I could do it again, I would redraw the
line so that everyone was on the correct side, and hopefully it would all edit
together well.
I enjoyed being DP with Steven. He was very prepared with equipment and his shot list was also really thorough. I liked the location that he found and it was really interesting to do a scene with so many actors. I’ve never tried to get coverage of so many people before. It was hard to know where the line was and how to orient my audience in the space. I mostly just filmed where Steven told me to. If I had thought more about it and perhaps researched a few scenes that were shot around a table, I probably could have learned better how to handle that situation and I might have contributed more creatively and helped fix some bumps. One of the biggest issues we ran into was that several of the actors had to leave at different times on set and for a scene of this scope, that was really difficult. We really needed them all to be there as much as possible for continuity purposes. It was a great experience overall and I’m happy I got to be a part of it!
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