PRODUCTION DIARY - DAY 6 - January 7th, 2011 | UniSA West Campus, Adelaide
Crew in attendance: Peter Ninos (Director), David Tang (Cinematographer), Lyndon (Gaffer/Camera Assist), Trent Ninos (First A.D.), Teena Ninos (D.A./Sound Recorder), Billy Ninos (Clapper Loader/Boom Poll) & Paul Larsen (Grip/Runner). Cast in attendance: Adam Schmerl (Jake).
Scenes being filmed: OMEGA Scenes 2, 3, 13 & 14.
Big night ahead of us, tonight we have four scenes to film in four different sets! We're back again at UniSA, they've kindly allowed us to film in a vacant office, a long hallway, and a locker room. Thanks again Christine, Mark and UniSA Security!
With so much to shoot we arrived earlier to set then we have so far. Being this time of year it was still quite light outside so we opted to film the Locker Room and Radar Room scenes first as the set was partially underground and had no windows - so we had complete control of the lighting.
Scene 3 was up first, the Army Locker Room. DTang made a makeshift window (to shine the lights through) with some dividing walls the Uni store in this large locker room. Such a crafty Cinematographer isn't he? DTang and Lyndon played around with the lights and got some cool effects by shining the lights onto the rough metal ceiling, the effect gave the background above the lockers a lot of depth. We ran through the shot list pretty quickly and got some nice sweeping shots of Adam entering the room, getting his gear out, seeing the missed call from Jess, then exiting. I'm glad we managed to get this shot, we had to change the location originally for Day 2 because we couldn't get into this set (it was being renovated up until last week). So now that we have this establishing shot of Jake leaving the lockers we can cut to the hallway where the phone conversation with Jess takes place.
Scene 2 was up next, the Radar Room. Luckily this locker room was large enough that we were able to use another corner as the radar station. The dividers came in handy again to make walls around the radar desk, we had a PS3 and monitor playing the radar graphic I created in Photoshop and animated in After Effects. I had to re-edit the graphic on the spot because the 10 second loop was noticeable on the PS3's playback. DTang and Lyndon used the fixture lighting with green gels for the ambient light and they had a redhead with a deep red gel for when the emergency light comes on. We ran through the sequence a few times, Adam read his opening line and it all ended up looking very cool. Thanks to Paul for standing in for the Radar Supervisor voice.
Scene 14 was great fun, while DTang, Lyndon, Adam and I were going through and planning Scenes 3 & 5, Teena, Trent, Billy & Paul were getting the next set ready - and by getting it ready I mean trashing the place! Scene 14 takes place in Prof. Jameson's office at the Stockport Observatory post-kidnapping. Funny, this set was trashed first then will have to be recreated untrashed when we come back to film Devon's pre-kidnapping scenes. We took plenty of photos and videos so we can recreate the set when we're back to film in the next few weeks. Our set was a vacant office right around the corner from our hospital set from Day 3, it was empty except for a desk, chairs and whiteboard. So the crew went to town adding in our props, hurling papers everywhere and filling the whiteboard with astronomical jargon. This room was on the inside of the building but had a large window looking out into the student computer area, we took advantage of this by lowering the blinds, hoisting a box plant onto a table outside the window and shining the Blondie through the leaves as simulated moonlight. It definitely looked like a spooky, ransacked office. The effect was outstanding, well done DTang!
The shoot went very smoothly, we worked with Adam to work out the actions he'd go through and what parts of the set he'd interact with, we ran through the scene from start to finish from several different angles. We had a great take of the crucial plot moment - when Jake discovers some of Jameson's notes hinting at the true nature of OMEGA!
Scene 13 rolls around and I'll be honest - by this point it's past 1:00 am, stinking hot, and we're exhausted. We had said goodnight to Lyndon and we moved on to our last scene for the night. As is always the case we only discovered the frosty air conditioning switch towards the end of the shoot, that made things more bearable (but would've been nice five hours earlier). Okay, so Scene 13 is a quick one, just Jake running down the long Observatory hallway before stepping into Jameson's office. DTang and I decide to do it on the fly, we left Trent, Billy & Paul to pack up all the equipment and completely restore the trashed office to it's neat and tidy self. The hallway we were filming in was on the second level of the Yungondi Building, it was very long but also full of lights which unfortunately we couldn't turn off. So it was tricky working out the shot when the scene is set during a black out. So we kept it simple, we didn't set up any of our lights and DTang just framed the fixture lighting out of the shot. We had Teena on sound and boom, DTang on camera, Adam acting while I Directed and operated the Slate. We ran through it four times before we got usable footage, not a minute too soon as we discovered DTang quietly napping against the wall cradling his 7D.
Home time, yes! It was a very loooooooooooooooooong shoot and I think we were all feeling the effects of all these late nights (the heat certainly didn't help). So a bigger then normal Thank You to the cast and crew! Two more days of filming and then we can have a break!
Cheers Adam, DTang, Teena, Trent, Billy & Paul. And thank you to Lyndon for helping out tonight as Camera Assist, much obliged.
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