Production diary 2: Poppy's dungeon for sacrifices
Today's shoot i've been looking forward to as we get to film in the universities basements where the scenes in which benji is sacrificed by poppies twin sister. however there were a few obstacles in a way before we began filming.
As it was one of my duties of being a 2nd AC to svea i was tasked with clearing the basement of any discarded rubbish, mannequin parts that were left behind, old props and parts of props that were left alone, old stands for mannequin heads and cameras and finally large rusty poles and stands that were in the way were dragged into a very scary mannequin room. Once the debris and planks were removed, our set designer could begin creating the ritual area and Svea could set up the lighting, leaving us with one amazing looking (yet creepy) ritual area, with cobwebs, spiders, occult symbols and candles.
Much like the last shoot, my role consisted of taking down shots, giving svea what she needed for the camera or other tools and keeping in contact with lynley on each shot and take, however because of the scenes we were filming, i was given a new role: using the smoke machine.
This was the first time i had got to use the smoke machine on a production, so it was no surprise that i accidentally ruined a take because the amount of smoked shrouded the scene in a white veil of nothing. But from this we did find out that the smoke lingers on set for far too long, luckily a tray that we had used for the cafe scene was in our props bag allowing us to fan away the smoke as soon as possible to get ready to shoot once again. Unfortunately due to the enclosed dusty area of the shoots, we had to take regular breaks for air as some of us found our self developing bad coughs from the mix of dust and smoke from filming all day.
Overall a fun shoot with us managing to complete the scene meaning we would have no need of the basement, only in the event of reshoots