Smoke (Not) On The Water
Thursday's session gave us a pretty important task when it came to technical skills. we were told to light one of the sets in the new sound stages, turned from old bus stations. our set was an old fishing with windows we were able to shine lights through, helping us make the set seem more alive.
we also learned the value of reflectors, mirror like tools to help bounce light in certain angles, or flip it to absorb it, creating less light. but the final tool that we got to play with was the smoke machine, which was able to let us create a creepy mood for our scene.
our scene was a sinister hooded man (me) walking through the fog then out of shot. i didn't have time to rehearse through the fog so i had to blindly walk in a forward direction in the hopes i don't hit the camera. we did the scene multiple times because the smoke dissipates very quickly, but from the angle of the camera, the footage looked very spooky as the smoke is so thick, i literally disappear until i walk through.
The 2nd shoot was somewhat like a scene from an old zombie film, the set up was simple, laying down on the floor and rising up from the ground like some old Universal horror film.
We did have some problems however, because of the thickness of the fog, i was given an audio cue instead of the a visual cue. Mike managed to show us a pretty interesting trick, when the smoke is shot into a sewer grate, the smoke rises through and actually stays longer and lies on the ground for a ominous natural scene.
once we had wrapped up, we decided to explore the bus sheds that weren't in use (for now) and discovered some old cart left there, at first we messed around with it, but mike had an idea of using the cart as a makeshift dolly for a tracking shot
the scene tracked a group of people whilst mike and Hannah walked in the opposite direction past them, once out of shot, they'd run around the cart then walk back in the same direction creating a continuous loop.