Production

Filming went well. The black curtains fulfilled the purpose of wanting to keep the background plain and not busy, so that when the film was turned into Black and White nothing in the foreground would blend into the background. I noticed that Jack had a black jacket on, which would have blended in, so as Director I asked him to change it to the light-coloured jacket that I was wearing. Everyone agreed with this decision, and it worked well in editing. Adam and his team (Ellie and Jack) set up the studio lighting, complimenting the simplicity of our scene, to focus on the acting and the story.

As Director, I chose Jack and Harley as the main 2 actors, since I know from experience working with them last year that they are the best actors. I cast Jack as the “bad” guy (see my Reflective Research) partly because he is taller than Harley but also because I knew he would act this role well. I cast Harley as the “good guy” since he is the shorter of the 2 so able to look intimidated and cower more easily. I was happy with this casting, and so was everyone else. I explained to Jack and Harley how I saw their characters behaving, i.e. Jack being really intimidating and advancing threateningly but in a comical way toward Harley’s character who would be backing away round the last remaining chair, but staying near the chair, cowering to emphasis the height difference. Jack suggested his character ducking behind the tall whiteboard at one point and Harley looking around as if thinking “Where has he gone?” then Jack peering round the board and glaring at Harley before walking back out. This worked well, and they worked well together, as I had been sure they would. I also directed them to use slightly over exaggerated actions too, as I had researched. This worked well – since we had all been researching Black and White Silent films they knew what I meant, and were able to pull this off without overdoing it.

Charlie was the Announcer (see script above) and Ellie was the person who had just been knocked out of the game as we joined the scene, we see her walking off with a chair.

Adam set up the camera on a tripod, with me checking the framing as I wanted to be sure that we would see all of Jack and his legs as he fell down. Although we had written on our script to change to a medium long shot at the end, on reflection I really didn’t think this would work since it didn’t fit with the brief of a single shot. So we changed it and did just keep the camera stationary the whole time.

Getting this set up right took a bit of time out of our hour and 30 mins available time, but was worth it, as I feel the finished film was as I had imagined it. It did limit the time we had for filming, but we still did a couple of takes, which is fine. Adam and Ellie operated the camera.

Below are a couple of behind the scenes shots.